THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
THE TAUPO FUAMOA.
In the Strange
South Seas
By BEATRICE GRIMSHAW
Author of
"From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands," etc.
London :
HUTCHINSON & CO.
Paternoster Row
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION .9
CHAPTER I
Fate and Her Parcels How It All came true The First
South Sea Island Coleridge and the Tropics The
Spell of the Island Scents What happens to Travellers
Days in Dreamland A Torchlight Market The
Enchanted Fei . . . . . . . .12
CHAPTER II
The History of Tahiti Drink and the Native In the Old
Wild Days The Simple and the Civilised Life What
an Island Town is like The Lotos Eaters Cocoanuts
and Courtesy A Feast of Fat Thirigs The Orgy on
the Verandah Schooners and Pearls The Land of
Tir-n'an-Oge . . .*- - . , : - . . . . .26
CHAPTER III
Is It the Loveliest ? How they deal with the Beachcomber
Cockroaches and Local Colour The Robinson
Crusoe Steamer Emigrating to the South Seas The
Lands of Plenty How to get an Island . . .50
CHAPTER IV
Where are the Six Thousand ? Calling on the Queen A
Victoria of the Pacific 'The Prince sleeps softly The
Mystical Power of the Mana How Islanders can die *'
A Depressing Palace Round the Wonderful Road-
way The Home of Queen Tinomana A Princess's
Love Story Once on Board the Schooner ! The In-
credible Crabs Depravity of a Mor Kiri-kiri . . 68
VI CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
Feasting and Fun on Steamer Day The Brown People
of Raratonga Who sent back the Teeth ? Divorce
made easy Climbing a Tropical Mountain A Hot-
water Swim Out on the Rainbow Coral Reef Neck-
laces for No One . ..-.-. . ." . " r . 88
CHAPTER VI
The Simple Life in the South Seas Servant Problems
again Foods and Fruits of the Country The Tree
that digests Home-made Vanilla The Invaluable
Lime How to cook a Turtle In an Island Bungalow
The Little House on the Coral Shore Humours of
Island Life Burying a Cycle a Network of Names
Mr. Zebedee-Thunderstorm-Tin-Roof The Night-
dress that went to Church The Extraordinary Wed-
ding South Sea Musicians A Conductor's Paradise
Society Journalism in Song . . . , . 103
CHAPTER VII
The Schooner at last White Wings versus Black Funnels
Not according to Clark Russell The Marvellous
White Woman The Song of the Surf Why not ?
Delightful Aitutaki Into an Atoll A Night in the
House of a Chieftainess The Scarlet Devil Nothing
to wear How to tickle a Shark The Fairy Islets A
Chance for Robinson Crusoe . . . . : .118
'CHAPTER vin
Jumping a Coral Reef The Great Wall of the Makatea
Makaia's Wonderful Staircases A Clothing Club of
the Pacific Cool Costumes in Atiu The Lands that
lie waste Mystery of a Vanished Tribe Fashions in
Hair-Dressing The Sign-Language of the Sex In-
vited to a Feast 140
CHAPTER IX
Islands and Adventures What about the Missionary ?
The Lotus Eaters How to Hunt the Robber-Crab
The Ship that would not sail Proper Place of a Pas-
senger One Way to get wrecked The Pirate and the
Pearls .... /> .. - . . . 156
CONTENTS Vll
PAGK
CHAPTER X
How not to see the Islands Lonely Niue A Heathen
Quarantine Board The King and the Parliament
The Great Question of Gifts Is it Chief-like ? The
New Woman in Niue Devil-fish and Water-Snakes
An Island of Ghosts How the Witch-Doctor died
The Life of a Trader . . . . .181
CHAPTER XI
A Life on the Ocean Wave Where they kept the Dynamite
How far from an Iced Drink ? The Peacefulness
of a Pacific Calm A Golden Dust Heap Among the
Rookeries Sailing on the Land All about Guano . 212
CHAPTER XII
Pearl-fishing at Penrhyn The Beautiful Golden-Edge
Perils of the Pearl Diver A Fight for Life Visit to a
Leper Island A God-forsaken Place How they kept
the Corpses The Woman who sinned A Nameless
Grave On to Merry Manahiki The Island of Dance
and Song Story of the Leper and his Bird Good-bye
to the Duchess , .212
CHAPTER XIII
The Last of the Island Kingdoms Fashions in Nukualofa
The King who was shy His Majesty's Love Story
Who got the Wedding-Cake ? The Chancellor goes
to Jail Bungalow Housekeeping The Wood of the
Sacred Bats By the Tombs of the Tui-Tongas A
" Chief " Kava-party The Waits ! Mariner's Cave
The Cave of the Swallows To Samoa t -255
CHAPTER XIV
Stevenson's Samoa What happened when it rained Life
in a Native Village The Albino Chief A Samoan
" Bee " The Tyranny of Time Fishing at Midnight
Throwing the Presents My Friend Fangati The
Taupo Dances Down the sliding Rock " Good-bye,
my Flennie ! " ' . . . . . . 281
V1U CONTENTS
CHAPTER XV
Southward to New Zealand Into the Hot-Water Country
Coaching Days come back The Early Victorian Inn
The Fire and Snow of Ruapehu A Hotel run wild
Hot Lakes and Steaming Rivers The Devil's
Trumpet The Valley of the Burning Fountains
Waking up the Champagne Lake . . . . 312
CHAPTER XVI
From Heaven to Hades Gay Rotorua Where One lives
on a Pie-crust The Birth of a River Horrible Tiki-
tere In the Track of the Great Eruption Where are
'. the Pink and White Terraces ? A Fountain fifteen
hundred feet high Foolhardy Feat of a Guide How
; the Tourists were killed A Maori Village Soaping a
Geyser The End < . . . . . 331
APPENDIX 349
In desire of many marvels over sea,
When the new made tropic city sweats and roars,
I have sailed with young Ulysses from the quay,
Till the anchor rattled down on stranger shores.
KIPLING.
MOST men have their loves, happy or hopeless,
among the countries of the earth. There are
words in the atlas that ring like trumpet calls to the ear
of many a stay-at-home in grey northern cities names
of mountains, rivers, islands, that tramp across the map
to the sound of swinging music played by their own gay
syllables, that summon, and lure, and sadden the man
who listens to their fifing, as the music of marching
regiments grips at the heart of the girl who loves a
soldier.
They call, they call, they call through the long March
mornings, when the road that leads to everywhere is
growing white and dry through restless summer nights,
when one sits awake at the window to see the stars turn
grey with the dawn in the warm midday, when one
hurries across the city bridge to a crowded eating-house,
and the glittering masts far away down the river must
never be looked at as one passes. Of a misty autumn
evening, when steamers creeping up to seaport towns send
long cries across the water, one here, and another there,
will stir uneasily in his chair by the fire, and shut his
ears against the insistent call. . . . Why should he listen,
he who may never answer ?
\
10 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
(Yokohama, the Golden Gate, Cape Horn, the Rio Grande,
Agra, Delhi, Benares, Bombay, the Amazon, the Andes, the
South Sea Islands, Victoria Nyanza, the Pyramids, the Nile,
Lhassa, Damascus, Singapore, the tundras, the prairies,
trade-winds, tropics, and the Line can't you hear us
calling i>)
Love is not stronger than that call let sweetheartless
girls left alone, and the man of cities who has loved the
woman of the wandering foot, give bitter witness. Death
is not stronger those who follow the call must defy him
over and over again. Pride of country, love of home,
delight in well-known faces and kindly hearts that under-
stand, the ease of the old and well-tried ways, the prick of
ordinary ambitions hungering for the showy prizes that
every one may see these are but as dead leaves blown
before the wind, when the far-off countries cry across the
seas. Not one in a hundred may answer the call ; yet never
think, you who suppose that love and avarice and the lust
of battle sum up all the great passions of the world, that
scores out of every hundred Englishmen have not heard
it, all the same. " In the heart of every man, a poet has
died young " ; and in the heart of almost every Briton,
a wanderer once has lived. If this were not so, the
greatest empire of the world had never been.
So, to The Man Who Could Not Go, I address this book
to the elderly, white-waistcoated city magnate, grave
autocrat of his clerkly kingdom (never lie to me, sir
what was your favourite reading in the sixties, and why
were you a very fair pistol shot, right up to the time when
you were made junior manager ?) to the serious family
solicitor, enjoying his father's good old practice and house,
and counting among the furnishings of the latter, a shelf
of Marryats, Mayne Reids, and Michael Scotts, wonder-
fully free of dust to the comfortable clergyman, immersed
in parish cares, who has the oddest fancy at times for
standing on dock-heads, and sniffing up odours of rope
and tar to all of you, the army of the brave, unwilling,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS n
more or less resigned Left Behinds, who have forgotten
years ago, or who will never forget while spiring masts
stand thick against blue skies, and keen salt winds wake
madness in the brain to all I say : Greeting ! and may the
tale of another's happier chance send, from the fluttering
pages of a book, a breath of the far-off lands and the calling
sea.
CHAPTER I
Fate and Her Parcels How It All came true The First South
Sea Island Coleridge and the Tropics The Spell of the
Island Scents What happens to Travellers Days in
Dreamland A Torchlight Market The Enchanted Fei.
T IKE an idle messenger-boy, Fate takes a long while
J ' about her rounds, but she will get through with
them and deliver all her parcels, if you give her time enough.
She has so much business that she confuses orders very
often, and you are never sure of getting what you sent
for. Still, you will certainly get something, if you wait,
and it may even be the thing you demanded.
The morning she called at my door, with a very full
basket, she had already been to my neighbours, and given
them, in a big assortment of goods a failure on the Stock
Exchange, a hunting accident, and a broken engagement.
What they had ordered was a seat in Parliament, and a
winter at Monte Carlo, with anything good that might
come in in the way of new-laid motor-cars. But Fate was,
as usual, in a hurry, and she never changes any goods,
once delivered. So they had to take them in.
I had given up expecting her when her knock came
to my door, because my order had been sent in some
years ago, -and so far had remained unacknowledged.
But she fairly emptied her basket into my hands, once
she was admitted.
" Goods all right, and none the worse for keeping ;
couldn't find time to see to you before, I've been so busy
attending to an order from Japan for a new army and a
gross of assorted victories," she panted. " Had to serve the
Czar of Russia with a lot of old defeats I've had lying by
since the Crimea, instead of the new empire he sent for ;
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 13
and can't get time to fill more than half the German
Emperor's order for fireworks. You private people are
lucky to get anything at all. Count the goods, please
one journey round the world, two-and-a-half years of mixed
adventures, a hundred South Sea Islands, threescore new
friends, first quality, one large package luck. That's all,
I think sign the book, and let me go ; I've got seven
attacks of appendicitis, a foreclosed mortgage, two law-
suits, and a divorce, to deliver in this square before lunch."
So, like the fairy tales, " it all came true," and one
bright winter afternoon a Cunard liner bore me away
from the streets and shops and drab-coloured, huddled
houses of Liverpool, down the muddy Mersey off round
the world.
There were thousands of people on the quay, come to see
the famous boat away, for it was Saturday afternoon, and
the town took holiday. They had a few hours of freedom
before them then, the airless office room, the stuffy shop,
the ledger and the copying-press, and the clattering type-
writer, the grim window giving on the dark wet street,
for six long days again. Next year, and the year after,
just the office, the frowsy lodging, the tram car, the pen
in the strong young fingers, the desk to stoop the broad
young shoulders, the life foreseen, eventless, grey for
ever and for ever. And I was going round the
world.
It is three weeks later, and the big " A and A " steamer
is ploughing along in the midst of a marvellous dazzle
of diamond-spangled, pale-blue tropic sea and scorching,
pale-blue tropic sky. The passengers, in cool white suits
and dresses, are clustered together on the promenade
deck, looking eagerly over the port railing, while the
captain, telescope in hand, points out something lying
only a mile away, and says : " That's Tiki-Hau, so now
you've seen a South Sea Island."
We are on our way to Tahiti, a twelve-day run from
T4 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
San Francisco, and are not stopping anywhere, but as
Tiki-Hau is the only glimpse of land we shall get until
we cast anchor in Papeete, every one wants to look at it.
Not one of us has ever seen a South Sea Island, and we
are all eager to realise this little fragment of our rainbow-
coloured childish dreams.
Is it as good as we dreamed it ? we ask ourselves and
each other. The verdict, given unanimously, is : " Yes
but not the same."
Here is no high green palmy peak, overhanging a wave-
less sea, with sparkling waterfalls dashing down from crag
to crag, like the coloured illustrations in our old school
prize books. There are, indeed, just such islands in the
Pacific, we are told many hundreds of them but there
are still more of the kind we are now looking at, which is
not half so often mentioned. All South Sea Islands are
either high or low ; the high island, with lofty mountains
and dark, rich volcanic soil, is the familiar island of the
picture book, while the low type, composed only of coral, is
the variety to which Tiki-Hau belongs.
What we can see of the island, however, is enough to
set at rest any tendency to comparison. None of us
want anything better ; none of us think there can be any-
thing better, among the wonders that the Great South Seas
yet hold in store.
Tiki-Hau is an island of the atoll or ring-shaped type,
a splendid circle of seventy and eighty-foot palms, en-
closing an inner lagoon clear and still as glass. Outside
the windy palms, a dazzling beach runs down to the open
sea all round the island a beach that is like nothing the
travellers ever have seen before, for it is made of powdered
coral, and is as white as salt, as white as starch, as white
as the hackneyed snow-simile itself can paint it. All the
island the whole great ring, many miles in length is
coral too, white, branching, flowering coral under water,
white, broken-coral gravel above, with here and there a
thin skin of earth collected by a century or two of falling
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 15
palm-leaves and ocean waste. Outside the magic ring
the sea-waves tumble, fresh and blue, upon the cloud-white
sand ; within, the still lagoon glows like a basin of molten
emerald. Above, the enormous palm-trees swing their
twenty-foot plumes of gaudy yellow-green to the rush of
warm trade-wind, high in the burning sky. A glorious
picture indeed but one before which the painter well
might tremble.
Here, for the first time, we begin to understand why
pictures of tropical scenes are so few and so unsatisfactory.
Paint ! what combination of coloured grease that ever
came out of a box could hope to suggest the pale green fire
of those palm-tree plumes, the jewel-blaze of the lagoon, the
sapphire flame of the sea, the aching, blinding whitenesses
of spray and sand ? Who could paint the sun that is
literally flashing back from the light dresses of the passen-
gers, making of every separate person a distinct conflagra-
tion, and darting lightning rays out of the officers' gold
shoulder-straps and buttons ? Does any dweller in the
dim grey North really know what light and colour are ? did
we know, with our tinselled April days, and gentle blue
and white August afternoons, that we were so proud of
once ? Well, we know now ; and, alas, in the dim, prosaic
years that are yet to come, we shall remember !
The ship steams on, the atoll fades away in the distance,
and once more comes the changeless level of long blue empty
sea. But we have seen a coral island, and the picture is
ours for ever.
Flying-fish, skimming and " skittering " over the surface
of the waves, we have all become used to now. The first
day we met them was a memorable one, all the same
they were so exactly what one had paid one's money to
see. Sharks have disappointed us so far ; never a sight
of the famous " black triangular fin " have we yet en-
joyed, and the passengers have an idea that something
ought to be said to the steamship company about it.
Nor have the equatorial sunsets quite kept up their stage
16 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
character. Books of travel, and sea literature in general,
have led us to expect that the sun, in the tropics, should
go out at sunset as though Poseidon had hold of the switch
down below the water line, and turned off the light the
instant sun and horizon met.
i . . The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out,
At one stride comes the dark.
p They don't, Mr. Coleridge, and it doesn't, and you never
were there to see for yourself, .or you would not have
talked beautiful nonsense and misled countless travellers
of all ages who did see, but who have refused to look, save
through your illustrious spectacles, ever since. Even on
the equator, the sun gives one time to dress for dinner
(if the toilet is not a very elaborate one) while it is setting,
and after it has set. So dies one more illusion. Yet it
can easily be spared, in the midst of a thousand wild dreams
and strange imaginings, realised to the very utmost, as
ours are to be ere long.
Tahiti comes at last. In the pearly light of a sunrise
pure as a dawn of earliest Eden, we glide into the shadow
of a tall, rose-painted peak, spiring eight thousand feet up
into heaven, and anchor in the midst of a glassy mirror of
violet sea. Papeete, the loveliest, sweetest, and wickedest
town of all the wide South Seas, lies before us just a sparkle
of red roofs looking out from under a coverlet of thick
foliage, a long brown wharf and a many-coloured crowd.
Across the water steals a faint strange perfume, unlike
anything I have ever smelled before heavy, sweet, pene-
trating, suggestive. ... It is cocoanut oil scented with
the white tiere flower, 'and never, from Tahiti to Samoa,
from Raratonga to Fiji, Vavau, Manihiki, or Erromanga,
will the South Sea traveller lose the odour of it again.
Cocoanut oil, and the nutty, heavy smell of copra (dried
cocoanut kernel) are charms that can raise in an instant
for any old island wanderer, in the farthest corners of the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 17
earth, the glowing vision of the wonderful South Sea
world.
. . . Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heartstrings crack,
They start those awful voices o' nights
That whisper : " Old man, come back ! "
(Old island wanderers in all parts of the world settled
down to desks in the E.G. district tramping through the
December glare of Pitt Street, Sydney, for " orders " occu-
pying a tranquil, well-bred billet, and a set of red-tape harness,
in the Foreign Office do you smell the tiere flower, and hear
the crooning of the reef, and feel the rush of the warm trade
wind, and the touch of the sun-baked sand, under the utu
trees once more ?}
So I landed in Papeete, and found myself in the South
Sea Islands at last.
All that afternoon, like " Tommy " in Barrie's .Thrums,
I kept saying to myself : " I'm here, I'm here ! " . . .
There was no mistake about Papeete. It was not dis-
appointing or disillusioning, it was only more lifelike than
life, more fanciful than fancy, infinitely ahead of all past
imaginations.
There were the waving palms of picture and story,
laden with immense clusters of nuts ; there were the won-
derful bananas, with broad green leaves ten and twelve
feet long, enshrouding bunches of fruit that were each a
good load for a man ; there were the greenhouse flowers
of home the costly rare stephanotis, tuberose, gardenia
climbing all over the verandahs of the houses, and filling
half-cultivated front gardens with stacks and bouquets
of bloom. And the dug-out canoes, made from a single
hollowed log supported by an outrigger, flitting about the
glassy lagoon like long-legged waterflies and the gorgeous,
flamboyant trees, ablaze with vermilion flowers, roofing
over the grassy roadway in a series of gay triumphal arches
and above all, beyond all, the fiery-gold sunlight, spilling
i8 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
cataracts of flame through the thickest leafage, turning
the flowers to white and red-hot coals, painting the shadows
under the houses in waves of ink, and bleaching the dust
to dazzling snow how new, how vivid, how tropical it
all was !
The native population was out in full force to see the
steamer come in. So, indeed, were the white residents,
in their freshest suits and smartest muslins, but they met
with small attention from the little band of newcomers.
It was the Tahitians themselves who claimed all our
interest the famous race who had been so well liked by
Captain Cook, who had seduced the men of the Bounty
from allegiance to King George of England, a hundred
and sixteen years ago, who were known all the world
over as the most beautiful, the most amiable, and the most
hospitable of all the South Sea Islanders.
Some of the passengers, I fancy, expected to see them
coming down to the shore clad in necklaces and fringes of
leaves, eager to trade with the newcomers^ and exchange
large pearls and thick wedges of fine tortoiseshell for
knives, cloth, and beads. . . . Most of us were better
prepared, however, having heard a good deal about Papeete,
the Paris of the South Seas, from the people of the steamer,
and having realised, on our own account, that a great
deal of water might run under a bridge in a hundred years,
even here in the South Pacific.
So the smartness of the native crowd surprised only
a few, of whom I was not one. On the contrary, I was
surprised to find that here, in this big island group, with
its fortnightly steamer, its large " white " town, and its
bureaucratic French Government, some kind of a national
dress did really still exist. The Tahitian men were
variously attired, some in full suits of white, others in a
shirt and a brief cotton kilt. The women, however, all
wore the same type of dress a flowing nightdress of cotton
or muslin, usually pink, pale green, or yellow, and a neat
small sailor hat made in the islands, and commonly
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 19
trimmed with a pretty wreath of shells. Most of them
wore their hair loose, to show off its length and fineness
Tahitians have by far the most beautiful hair of any
island race and not a few were shoeless, though nearly
all had smart parasols. The colour of the crowd was
extremely various, for Tahiti has more half and quarter
castes than full-blooded natives in Papeete at all events.
The darkest, however, were not more than tea-coloured,
and in most instances the features were really good.
So much one gathered in the course of landing. Later
on, during the few days I spent in an hotel waiting for
the Cook Island steamer for, alas ! I was not staying
in Tahiti there was opportunity for something further
in the way of observation. But
But It happens to every one in Tahiti, why
should I be ashamed of it ? There was once a scientific
man, who came to write a book, and took notes and notes
and notes for two days and a half. Then, he thought he
would take a morning's rest, and that is five years ago,
and he has been resting ever since, and they say in the
stores that he has not bought so much as a sheet of letter
paper, or a penny bottle of ink, but that his credit for
cigars and ice, and things that go with both very well, and
for pyjamas to lounge about the back verandah in, and
very cheap novels, and silk-grass hammocks, is nearly run
out in Papeete. There was a Government official
perhaps it was two, or three, or sixty Government officials
who came to Papeete very full of energy and ability,
and very much determined to work wonders in the sleepy
little colony. . . . He, or they, is, or are, never to be seen
awake before three in the afternoon, and his clerks have
to type the signatures to his letters, because he will not
trouble to write his name ; and their people think they
died years and years ago, because they have never carried
out their intention of telling some one to find some one
else to send a message to say they are alive. And there
are a dozen or fourteen gentlemen who keep stores in
20 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Papeete, and if you go in to buy things in the morning or
afternoon or evening, mayhap you will find the gentleman
or his understudy asleep behind the counter, but mayhap
you will find the door shut, and the proprietor away at
breakfast, which takes him an hour, or lunch, which takes
from two hours to three, or dinner, which occupies him
from six till nine inclusive. After that, he may open again
for a little while, or he may not.
Must I explain now what happened to me in Papeete,
or why I am not in a position to add anything to the
scientific or ethnological, or geographic knowledge of the
world, concerning the Society Islands in general ?
A duty, obvious, immediate, and unperformed, is perhaps
the best of all spices to a dish of sweet laziness. And
there is not on earth's round ball such a spot to be lazy
in as pleasant Papeete. One is never fairly awake. It
is dreamland and what a happy dream ! The golden
light on the still lagoon is surely the " light that never was
on sea nor land " before we sailed in under the purple
peaks of Orohena. The chanting of the coral reef far out
at sea, unceasing, day and night, is the song the sirens sang
to strong Ulysses, in the dream dreamed for all ages by
the old Greek poet, long ago. The languorous voices of
the island women, sweet and low as the " wind of the
western sea " the stillness of the island houses, where
feet go bare upon the soundless floors, and music waxes
and wanes so softly now and then in whispering songs or
lightly swept piano keys, that it only blends with the long
mysterious murmur of the wind in the rustling palm trees,
to lull the senses into perfect rest these, too, are of the
world of dream.
Something out of dreamland, also, is the little hotel
where most of the travellers stay a rambling bungalow in
a grass enclosure, overrun with vivid flowers and splendid
leafage. That the proprietress should welcome her guests
in a long lace and muslin nightgown-dress, her pretty brown
feet bare, and her flowing wavy hair crowned with a wreath
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 21
of perfumed gardenia and tuberose, seems quite a natural
part of the dream ; that the chamber-maids should be
beautiful island girls clad in the same garb, and that they
should sit in the drawing-room playing the piano and
singing wild melancholy island songs, like the sighing of
the surf on the shore, when they ought to be making beds
or serving dinners, is also " in the picture." That the
Chinese cook should do elaborate Parisian cookery, and
that the coffee and the curry and the bread (or at least the
bread-fruit) should be picked in the garden as required,
and that there should be no visible means of shutting the
door of the bathroom, which is very public, until a carpenter
is called in, and that L , the charming proprietress,
should explain with a charming smile : " Only the house
been using it all this time," to account completely for the
deficiency all this belongs unmistakably to the irre-
sponsible dream-country. And when the warm tropic
night drops down, and one goes wandering in the moon-
light, to see for the first time the palm-tree plumes all
glassy-silver under the radiant sky, flashing magically as
they tremble in the faint night wind, it is more than ever
the land of dream that is thus lit up in the soft clear dusk.
So vivid is the moonlight, that one can even see the scarlet
colour of the flamboyant flowers fallen in the dust, and
distinguish the deep violet and hyacinthine hues of the far-
off mountain peaks across the bay. . . . How, in such
a place, can one waste the night in sleep ?
It is certainly not like any sort of waking life one has
hitherto known, to find that the market of Papeete one
of the principal sights of the place is held on Sunday
mornings before sunrise. One might have supposed that
such a supremely indolent people would scarcely choose
the most inconvenient hour of all the twenty-four for a
general gathering. But they do choose it, and the visitor
vrho wants to ^see the market must choose it also.
L calls me, herself, at some unearthly hour, not
much after four, and I get up and dress in the warm dark-
22 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
ness. It is the hot season at present and the air, night
and day, is very like a hot bath, and not far behind it in
temperature. I have been loafing about the town during
the previous day in rather thin shoes, and my feet have
been almost blistered by the heat of the ground striking
up through light soles, so that I cannot walk very far,
and am glad to find the market close at hand.
L , in a fresh muslin nightdress (she has something
like fifty or sixty of them), acts as guide. She has put
a new coronet of flowers in her hair, and before we reach
the market she proceeds to dress me up Tahiti fashion,
with long necklaces of sweet white blossoms round my
neck, falling all over my dress, and a heavy crown of
closely woven gardenias on my head, instead of my hat,
which she removes, and politely carries. She wants to
pull my hair down as well, but in a temperature of eighty
degrees the idea does not sound tempting, so I decline
to follow Tahitian custom further. Besides, there is really
no knowing where she would stop !
There is not yet a glimmer of daylight when we enter
the market-place, and flaring lamps and torches cast huge
flickering shadows all over the gay assembly. Fruit and
fish for the most part are the wares but such fish, and
such fruit ! Where one would look at home for white
and grey turbot, pallid plaice, zinc-coloured herrings,
here one may see the most gorgeous shapes of gold and
scarlet and green ; of iridescent rose, silver, orange ; of
blue, brilliant as a heap of tumbled sapphire, and pearl
as bright as the lining of a shell. Tahiti is famous lor
its beautiful fish, and indeed these in the market look
almost too poetically lovely to eat.
Then the fruit ! bananas as big as cucumbers, as small
as ladies' fingers (after which, indeed, this little sugar-
sweet^ variety is named), dark red bananas, flavoured like
a peach, large bloomy ones, tasting and looking like
custard within ; smooth yellow ones, like those exported
to other countries, whither the daintier fruits will not safely
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 23
go pineapple in rough-skinned heaps (one learns soon in
Tahiti how to eat a pineapple, and that is to peel it, cut
it into largest possible lumps, eat the latter undiminished
even if they make you speechless, and never, never, slice
the fruit) oranges of several different kinds, custard-
apples, rose-apples, paw-paws, melons, avocado pears,
guavas, mangoes, and other fruits the name of which I
have never heard all lying together in masses under the
lamplight, costing not as many halfpence to buy as at
home they would cost shillings.
The native beauties are here in a merry crowd, intent
quite as much upon enjoyment as on business. Scarcely
one but wears a flower behind her ear and if you have
ever been in the South Seas, you will know what that
pretty little signal means, but if you have not, why then
I shall not tell you and all are so wreathed, and crowned,
and necklaced with woven blossoms, that the air is heavy
with scent, and the market-place looks as though the
transformation scene of a pantomine were just about to
begin, with a full chorus of flower-decked nymphs appear-
ing for the dance.
One exceedingly pretty girl, with a perfect cataract of
black hair overflowing her pale green gown, and a pair of
sparkling dark eyes that could never be matched outside
the magic lines of Cancer and Capricorn, is making and
frying pancakes with something fruity, nature unknown,
inside them. She has half a dozen French officers about
her, enjoying breakfast and flirtation at the same time.
Another, who is selling a number of the oddest little parcels
imaginable, made out of cut-up joints of bamboo, carefully
sealed, is doing a good trade among the coloured and
semi-coloured ladies. L says she is selling ready-
made sauces, to be eaten with fish or meat, and adds that
she herself will show me what Tahitian sauces are like
later on, because there is no one in the whole group fit to
act as scullion to her in that important matter or words
to the same effect.
24 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Strange-looking mountain men are here, dressed in shirt
and kilt of cotton cloth, patterned in flowers and leaves
as big as soup-plates. The former garment is a concession
to Papeete outside the town, the " pareo " or kilt alone
forms the Tahitian full-dress suit. These men have come
in to sell the " fei," or wild banana, which is only found
on the- highest and most perilous of the mountain preci-
pices. To get it, the Tahitian must climb where not even
a goat would venture to go, and make his way back, having
secured the fruit, carrying a bunch that is a heavy load,
even on level ground. Many are the lives that have been
lost gathering the " fei," but the Tahitian, like all islanders,
is something of a fatalist, and the death of one fruit gatherer
never stops another from going a-hunting in the very
same place next day.
There is something about the same " fei " that is worth
noting. It is one of the standing dishes of the islands
a cooking banana, large, and well-flavoured when baked,
but not so attractive on the whole as many of the other
kinds. The Tahitian, however, ascribes to this variety
a certain magic property, not unlike that of the fabled
lotus. If you eat of the " fei," he says, especially if you
eat freely of it, you will fall under the spell. For ever,
in its working, it binds you to Tahiti. You may go away,
and without any intention of returning, say goodbye to
the islands, and place many thousand miles of land and
sea between yourself and sweet Tahiti, saying to yourself
that you and Papeete have no more to do with one another
for ever. . . . Yet by-and-by some day, one knows not
when ; it may be soon, or it may be late, but it will surely
come you will return to Tahiti. The spell of the fei will
work, and draw you back again.
So the natives said, and I thought the fancy a pretty
one, and wondered whether it had really any connection
with the lotus myth, and then forgot all about it.
That is three years ago, and since those days I have
travelled the whole world over, leaving Tahiti behind as
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 25
one leaves a station passed long ago on a railway journey,
upon a line that one never expects to traverse again. As
I write, the snows of winter Britain lie thick outside my
window, and a sea of Arctic coldness breaks in freezing
green and grey upon a desolate shore. Nothing on earth
seems farther away than the warm blue waves, and flowers
that never fade, and shining coral sands of Tahiti. But
. . . there is a steamer running southward before long,
and a great sunny city on the other side of the world
where the island boats lie waiting at the quays. And
one of those island boats, in a month or two, will carry
a passenger back to Tahiti a passenger who ate of the
fei three years ago, and went away for ever, but on whom
the spell of the magic fruit has worked after all.
CHAPTER II
The History of Tahiti Drink and the Native In the Old Wild
Days The Simple and the Civilised Life What an Island
Town is like The Lotos Eaters Cocoanuts and Courtesy
A Feast of Fat Things The Orgy on the Verandah
Schooners and Pearls The Land of Tir-n'an-Oge.
A LTHOUGH I certainly did not use the few days of
xx my stay in Tahiti to the best advantage although
I saw none of the public buildings of Papeete, never set
eyes on any of the officials of the place, and did not collect
any statistics worth mentioning, I gathered a few crude
facts of a useful kind, which are herewith offered as a sop
to the reader, who must be informed and improved, or
know the reason why. (If he would only go to Tahiti,
that dear reader, whom all travellers know so well and
fear so much ! if he would just spend a week lying on the
coral beach, and strolling in the moonlight, and listening
to native songs, and feeding fat on native dainties he
would never want to be informed of anything any more,
and as to being improved . . . O Tahiti, loveliest and
least conventional of the siren countries of the dear South
Seas, can you lay your hand on your heart, and honestly
declare you are improving ?)
Tahiti was discovered, not by Captain Cook, as is rather
commonly supposed, but by Captain Wallis of H.M.S.
Dolphin, in 1767. Captain Wallis formally took posses-
sion of the group in the name of His Majesty King George
III., and Captain Cook, in the course of his different visits
to the islands, laid the foundations of all the civilisation
they afterwards acquired. Nevertheless, the islands are
French property to-day. There is nothing in the Pacific
better worth owning than the Society group, more fertile,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 27
more beautiful, more healthy, richer in valuable tropical
products and the construction of the Panama Canal, an
event which has been foreseen for several generations,
will obviously add much to the importance of the -islands.
Because of these, and other excellent reasons, Great
Britain, acting on the principles by which her colonial
policy is commonly guided, allowed the Society Islands
to slip gradually into the hands of a power better able than
herself to appreciate their value, and the group, after
thirty-seven yejars of " protection," was finally taken
possession of by France, in the year 1880. The native
Queen, Pomare IV. (Pomare being a dynastic name like
Caesar, but, unlike the latter, applied to both sexes), was
allowed to retain her state and possessions under the
French protectorate. Her successor, King Pomare V.,
who succeeded in 1877 and died in 1891, only reigned for
three years. After the formal annexation he retained
his title of king, and much of his state, but the power was
entirely in French hands. Prince Hinoe, his -heir, who
would in the ordinary course have occupied the throne,
lives in a handsome European-built house near Papeete,
and enjoys a good pension, but is otherwise not distin-
guished in any way from the ordinary Tahitian.
Under French rule, the islands have done fairly
well. There were at first many regrettable disputes and
troubles between opposing camps of missionaries, but
these have long since been made up. Commerce is in
rather a languishing state. The group exports copra,
vanilla, pearl-shell, and fruit, but the trade with America
was so much on the down-grade during the time of my
visit, that steamers were leaving the port with empty
holds. The natives are well treated under the present
system ; the liquor laws, however, are defective, and no
Tahitian, apparently, has any difficulty in obtaining
as much strong spirits as he wants and can pay for. The
disastrous effects of such carelessness as this need no
mention to the reader who knows anything of dark-
28 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
skinned races. For the benefit of the reader who does
not, however, it may be remarked that all colonial ad-
ministrators agree concerning the bad effects of intoxicants
on coloured races of every kind. It matters not at what
end or part of the scale of colour the man may be
whether he is a woolly-haired, baboon -jawed nigger from
Central Africa, a grave, intelligent, educated Maori of
New Zealand, or a gentle child-like native of Tahiti,
barely cafe-au-lait as to colour all the same, and all
the time, spirits are sure to convert him, temporarily,
into a raging beast, and, in the long run, to wipe out him
and his kind altogether. It is not a question of temperance
principles or the reverse, but merely a matter of common-
sense policy, in dealing with races which have shown
themselves unable to withstand the effects of the liquors
that our hardier northern nations can use with com-
parative safety. One may lay it down as a general
principle that nothing with a coloured skin on it can
take intoxicants in moderation it is not at all, or all
in all, with the " native " when it comes to strong drinks.
Scientific folk would probably set down the comparative
immunity of the white races to the protection that lies
behind them in the shape of centuries of drinking
ancestors. The coffee-coloured islander's great-grand-
parents did not know whisky, just as they never ex-
perienced measles and other diseases, that do not usually
kill the white, but almost always put an end to the " man
and brother." Therefore, the islander's body has not,
by inheritance, acquired those points of constitution
which enable the white to resist whisky and measles,
and other dangerous things ; and when they touch him,
he goes down at once. A parallel may be found in the
case of opium, which the white man, broadly speaking,
cannot take in moderation, although most of the yellow
races can. Europeans who once acquire a liking for
the effects of opium will generally die as miserable wrecks,
in the course of a very few years. A Chinaman, under
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 29
similar circumstances, may, and often does, live to a good
old age, without taking any harm at all from his constant
doses. His ancestors have been opium takers, the
Englishman's have not. It is the case of the islander
and the spirits over again.
After which digression, one has some way to come
back to the fact that the French Government does not
prevent the Tahitian from drinking gin nearly so effec-
tively as it should, and that, in consequence, the di-
minution of the native population receives a downward
push that it does not in the least require. In the Fijis,
British rule keeps spirits strictly away from all the
natives, with the exception of the chiefs, and something,
at least, is thereby done to slacken the decline that
afflicts the people of almost every island in the Pacific.
The Fijian chiefs, as a rule, drink heavily, and do not
commonly live long, thus providing another argument
in favour of restriction.
The population of Tahiti is indeed much less than it
should be. Captain Cook's estimates of native popula-
tions are now understood to have been mistaken in many
cases, owing to the fact that he calculated the entire
numbers from the density of occupation round the shores.
As most Pacific islands are inhabited about the coasts
alone, the interior being often unsuitable for cultivation,
and too far removed from the fishing-grounds to suit an
indolent race, it can easily be understood that serious
errors would arise from such a method of estimate. The
diminution, therefore, since ancient times, is not quite
so alarming as the first writers on the Pacific and,
indeed, many who followed them supposed it to be.
If the sums worked out by the travellers who visited
Honolulu in the sixties, or Tahiti a little later, had been
correct, both of , these important groups would long since
have been empty of all native population. But the
Hawaiian group has still a very fair number of dark-
skinned people, while Tahiti, including all its islands,
30 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
had a population, according to the census of 1902, of
over thirteen thousand, one-eighth of whom are said to
be French, and a smaller .number Chinese and other
foreigners.
Still, it cannot be said that this is a large, or even a
fair population for a group of islands covering 580 square
miles, nor can it be denied that the numbers of the
Tahitians are steadily on the decrease. The exact causes
of the decline are disputed, as indeed they are in connection
with every other coloured race in the Pacific. European
diseases of a serious kind are extremely common in the
group, and consumption also is frequent. These are
two obvious causes. Less easily reckoned are the un-
named tendencies towards extinction that follow the
track of the white man through the lands of primitive
peoples, all over the world. There can be no doubt that
the old life of the Pacific feasting, fighting, making
love, and making murder : dressing in a bunch of leaves,
and living almost as completely without thought for the
morrow as the twittering parrakeets in the mango trees
suited the constitution of the islander better than the
life of to-day.
It may have been bad for his spiritual development,
and it certainly was bad for any wandering white men
who came, by necessity or choice, to visit his far-away
fastnesses. But he lived and flourished in those bad
days, whereas now he quietly and unostentatiously, and
quite without any rancour or regret, dies.
Why ? Old island residents will tell you that, even
if every disease brought by the white man were rooted
out to-morrow, the native would still diminish in numbers.
He has done so in islands where the effects of European
diseases were comparatively slight. He does so in New
Zealand, where the Maori (the supposed ancestor of most
of the island peoples) is petted, cherished, and doctored
to an amazing extent by the ruling race, and yet persists
in dying out, although he is not affected by consumption
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 31
or other evils to any serious extent. There are un-
doubtedly other causes, and perhaps among them not
the least is the fact that, for most Pacific races, life, with
the coming of civilisation, has greatly lost its savour.
It used to be amazingly lively in Tahiti, in the wild old
days. Then, the Tahitian did not know of white men's
luxuries of tea and sugar and tinned stuffs, lamps and
kerosene, hideous calico shirts and gaudy ties, muslin
gowns and frilled petticoats for the women, " bits " to
make patchwork quilts with, and beds to put the quilts
on, and matchwood bungalows to put the beds in, and
quart bottles of fiery gin to drink, and coloured silk
handkerchiefs to put away on a shelf, and creaking shoes
to lame oneself with on Sundays. Then, he did not let
or sell his land to some one in order to get cash to buy
these desirable things ; nor did his womankind, for the
same reason, adopt, almost as a national profession, a
mode of life to which the conventionalities forbid me to
give a name. Nor did the distractions of unlimited
church-going turn away his mind from the main business
of life, which was undoubtedly that of enjoyment. He
had no money, and no goods, and did not want either.
He had no religion (to speak of) and desired that still
less. All he had to do was to secure a good time, and get
up a fight now and then when things in general began
to turn slow.
It must be said that the exis'tence of the " Areoi," a
certain secret society of old Tahiti, went far to minimise
the risk of dullness. The members formed a species of
heathen " Hell- Fire Club," and they cultivated every
crime known to civilisation, and a few which civilisation
has happily forgotten. Murder, theft, human sacrifices,
cannibalism, were among their usual practices, and the
domestic relationships of the Society (which was large and
influential, and included both sexes) are said to have been
open to some criticism. They were popular, however,
for they studied music and the dance as fine arts, and
32 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
gave free entertainments to every one who cared to come.
They travelled from village to village, island to island,
giving " shows " wherever they went, and winning
welcome and favour everywhere by the brilliance and
originality of their improprieties. They were as wicked
as they knew how, and as amusing, and as devilish, and
as dazzling. . . . How the young Tahitian lad, not yet
tattooed, and considered of no importance, must have
reverenced and envied them ! how he must have imitated
their pranks in the seclusion of the cocoanut groves, and
hummed over their songs, and longed for the time when
he himself should be big enough to run away from home,
and go off with the delightful, demoniacal, fascinating
Areois !
Then there was always a native king in Tahiti in those
days, and a number of big native chiefs, each one of whom
had his own little court, with all the exciting surroundings
of a court which are never missing in any part of the world,
from Saxe-Niemandhausen to Patagonia. And there
were tribal fights from time to time, when property
changed hands, and war-spears were reddened, and a
man might hunt his enemy in the dusk, stealthy, soft-
footed, with heart jumping in his breast, along the
shadowy borders of the lagoon. . . . Murder and mischief
and fighting and greed, pomp of saVage courts and stir
of savage ambitions, and the other world that nobody
knew or cared about, shut off by a barrier of seas un-
explored. ... It was a life in which a man undoubtedly
did live, a life that kept him quick until he was dead.
Does the decline of Pacific races look less unaccountable
now ?
In these days, the Tahitian is undoubtedly improved.
He never was a very " bad lot " all round, in spite of the
Areois ; but Civilisation, of course, had to take him in
hand once it was known he was there, for Civilisation
will not have loose ends or undusted corners in her house,
if she can help it. So the people of Tahiti were discovered ,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 33
and converted, and clothed, and taught, and they gave
up being Areois, and worshipping heathen gods, and going
about without shirts and skirts, and they went frequently
to church, and supported their white pastors generously,
and began to trade with the Europeans, so that the latter
made much money.
They are quite happy and uncomplaining, and manage
to have a reasonably good time in a quiet way, but they
will die out, and nobody can prevent them. You see,
they are rather bored, and when you are bored, the
answer to the question, " Is life worth living ? " is, at the
least, debatable to a Pacific Islander.
I have written of this at some length, because, mutatis
mutandis, it applies to nearly all the island races.
It is not only the Tahitian who looks back with wistful
eyes to the faded sunset of the bad old times, with all
their savage gaudiness of scarlet blood and golden licence,
and languishes in the chill pale dawn of the white man's
civilisation. It is the whole Pacific world, more or less.
The Simple Life in the raw original is not, by many a long
league, as simple and innocent as it is supposed to be, by
those new and noisy apostles of a return to Nature, who
have never got nearer *to the things of the beginning than
a week-end up the Thames but, unsimple and un-
innocent as it is, it suits the coloured man better than
anything else. Would one, therefore, wish to put back
the clock of time, re-establish heathenism and cannibalism
over all the Pacific, and see Honolulu, Fiji, Samoa, with
their towns and Government Houses, and shops and roads
and plantations, leap back to the condition of the still
uncivilised western islands, where no man's life is safe,
and the law of might is the only law that is known ?
Hardly. There is no answer to the problem, and no
moral to be drawn from it either. But then, you dx> not
draw morals in the South Seas they are not plentiful
enough.
The Society Islands which were so named in compli-
2
34 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
ment to the Royal Society lie between 16 and 18
south latitude, and 148 and 158 west longitude. Tahiti
itself is much the' largest, the driveway round this island
being about ninety miles long. Huaheine, Raiatea,
Murea, Bora-Bora, and the small islands Taha'a and
Maitea, are much less important. The only town of the
group is Papeete.
So much, for the serious-minded reader, already
mentioned, who knows most things beforehand, and likes
his information cut-and-dried. The commoner and
more ignorant reader, I will assume, knows no more about
Tahiti than I did before I went, and therefore will be
glad of amplification.
Sixteen degrees only from the equator is hot very
hot at times and does not allow of a really cool season,
though the months between April and October are
slightly less warm than the others, and at night one may
sometimes need a blanket. Everything near the equator
is a long way from England, and everything on the south
side of the line is a very long way, and anything in the
Pacific is so far off that it might almost as well be in
another star. Tahiti, therefore, is quite, as the Irish
say, " at the back of God-speed."
Perhaps that is where much of its charm lies. There
is a fascination in remoteness, hard to define, but not
on that account less powerful. " So far away ! " is a
word-spell that has charmed many a sail across the seas,
from the days of the seekers after the Golden Fleece till now.
Papeete was the first of the island towns that I saw,
and it is so typical an example of all, that one description
may serve for many.
Imagine, then, a long, one-sided street, always known
in e^ery group as " the beach." The reason is apparent
it really is a beach with houses attached, rather than
a street with a shore close at hand. The stores roomy,
low, wood-built houses, largely composed of verandah
are strung loosely down the length of the street. Flam-
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 35
boyant trees, as large as English beeches, roof in the
greater part of the long roadway with a cool canopy of
green, spangled by bunches of magnificent scarlet flowers.
Almost every house stands in a tangle of brilliant tropical
foliage, and the side streets that run off landwards here
and there, are more like Botanic Gardens with a few
ornamental cottages let loose among them, than prosaic
pieces of a town so richly does the flood of riotous
greenery foam up over low fence tops, and brim into un-
guarded drains and hollows, so gorgeously do the red and
white and golden flowers wreathe tall verandah posts,
and carpet ugly tin roofs with a kindly tapestry of leaf
and bloom. Foot to foot and hand to hand with Nature
stands man, in these islands, let him but relax for a
moment, and there ! she has him over the line ! . . .
Leave Papeete alone for a couple of years, and you would
need an axe to find it, when you came back.
There are a number of hotels in Papeete mostly of
an indifferent sort, and none too cheap and there are
several large cafes and restaurants, run on lines entirely
Parisian, and a crowd of smaller ones, many owned by
Chinese, where the hard-up white may feed at a very
small cost, pleasantly enough, if he does not ask too many
questions about the origin and preparation of his food.
There are three local newspapers, and a military band
plays in the afternoons, and there are clubs of all kinds'
and not a little society, which being society is in its
essence bound to be uninteresting and flat, even here in
the many-coloured South Seas. But under all this, the
native life flows on in its own way, and the Tahitian takes
his pleasure after his immemorial fashion, as quietly and
as lazily as he is allowed. I have spoken hitherto of only
one side of the main street. The other, which gives
directly on the sea, belongs to the Tahitian life of Tahiti.
Here, a green slope of soft grass stretches down to the
greener waters of the sparkling lagoon : delicate palms
lean over the still sea-mirror, like beauties smiling into
2*
36 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
a glass ; flamboyant and frangipani trees drop crimson
and creamy blooms upon the grass ; and, among the
flowers, facing the sea and the ships and the dreamy
green lagoon, lie the natives, old and young. They wear
the lightest of cotton clothing, scarlet and rose and
butter-cup yellow, and white scented flowers are twisted
in their hair. Fruits of many colours, and roots and
fish, lie beside them. They eat a good part of the day,
and their dogs, sleeping blissfully in the shade at their
feet, wake up and eat with them now and then. There
is plenty for both no one ever goes short of food in
Tahiti, where the pinch of cold and hunger, and the
burden of hard, unremitting, unholidayed work are alike
unknown. Sometimes the natives wander away to the
river that flows through the town, and take a bath in its
cool waters ; returning later to lounge, and laze, and
suck fruit, and dream, on the shores of the lagoon again.
The sound of the surf, droning all day long on the coral
reef that bars the inner lake of unruffled green from the
outer ocean of windy blue, seems to charm them into
a soft half-sleep, through which, with open but unseeing
eyes, they watch the far-off creaming of the breakers in
the sun, and the flutter of huge velvet butterflies among
the flowers, and the brown canoes gliding like water-
beetles about the tall-masted schooners in the harbour.
With sunset comes a cooling of the heated air, and glow-
worm lights begin to twinkle through the translucent
red walls of the little native houses scattered here and
there. It will soon be dark now : after dark, there will
be dancing and singing in the house ; later, the sleeping
mats will be laid out, and with the moon and the stars
glimmering in through the walls upon their still brown
faces, the Tahitians will sleep. . . . So, in the sunset,
with
Dark faces, pale against the rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy lotus-eaters
wander home.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 37
Only a flash in the long cinematograph of the wonder-
ful track that circles the globe, is Tahiti. I cannot tell
of Murea, the marvellous island that lies opposite Papeete,
seven and a half miles away, because, during the few
days I spent in Tahiti, no boat was going there, and none
could be induced to go. So I had to look at Murea's
splintered towers and spiring pinnacles, and wonderful
purple goblin palaces, floating high among the clouds,
from the tantalising distance of Papeete harbour. Nor
could I join some steamer friends in driving round the
ninety-mile roadway, as we had intended stopping
in native towns, and seeing something of the inner life of
the island because no one in the capital had any teams-
for hire just then, and nobody knew when there woujd be
any. Some of us went up the river to see Pierre Loti's
bathing pool, and came back rather disappointed, and
others drove out to the tomb of Pomare V., three miles
from the town. It was a pile of concrete and stone,
modelled after European fashions, and not especially
interesting.
One of the ladies of the party wandered off with me
down the beach, neither of us being interested in the
resting-place of the defunct Pomare and here we found
plenty of food for mind and body both. For was not
this a pandanus, or screw-pine, which we had read about,
overhanging the lagoon, with the quaintest mops of
palmy foliage, set on long broom-handles of boughs, and
great fruits like pineapples hanging among the leaves,
and yellow and scarlet kernels lying thick on the sand
below the tree itself perched up on tall bare wooden
stilts formed by the roots, and looking more like something
from a comic scene in a pantomime, than a real live piece
of vegetation growing on an actual shore ? And were
not these cocoanuts that lay all about the beach under
the leaning palms nuts such as we had never seen before,
big as a horse's head, and smooth green as to outside,
but nuts all the same ?
38 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
A native slipped silently from among the thick trees
beside us a bronze-skinned youth of eighteen or nine-
teen, dressed only in. a light pareo or kilt of blue and white
cotton. He stood with hands lightly crossed on his
breast, looking at us with the expression of infinite kindli-
ness and good-nature that is so characteristic of the Tahitian
race. We signed to him that we wanted to drink, and
he smiled comprehendingly, shook his head at the nuts
on the ground, and lightly sprang on to the bole of the
palm beside us, which slanted a little towards the sea.
Up the trunk of that tree, which inclined so slightly that
one would not have thought a squirrel could have kept
its footing there, walked our native friend, holding on
with his feet and hands, and going as easily as a sailor
on a Jacob's ladder. Arrived in the crown some seventy
feet above, he threw down two or three nuts, and then
descended and husked them for us.
Husking a cocoanut is one of the simplest-looking
operations in the world, but I have not yet seen the white
man who could do it effectively, though every native is
apparently born with the trick. A stick is sharply pointed
at both ends, and one end is firmly set in the ground.
The nut is now taken in the hands, and struck with a
hitting and tearing movement combined, on the point
of the stick, so as to split the thick, intensely tough
covering of dense coir fibre that protects the nut, and rip
the latter out. It comes forth white as ivory, about the
same shape and size as the brown old nuts that come by
ship to England, but much younger and more brittle,
for only the smallest of the old nuts, which are not wanted
in the islands for copra-making, are generally exported.
A large knife is used to crack the top of the nut all round,
like an egg-shell, and the drink is read}', a draught of
pure water, slightly sweet and just a little aerated, if the
nut has been plucked at the right stage. There is no
pleasanter or more refreshing draught in the world, and
it has not the least likeness to the " milk " contained in
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 39
the cocoanuts of commerce. No native would drink old
nuts such as the latter, for fear of illness, as they are
considered both unpleasant and unwholesome. Only
half-grown nuts are used for drinking, and even these
will sometimes hold a couple of pints of liquid. The
water of the young cocoanut is food and drink in one,
having much nourishing matter held in solution. On
many a long day of hot and weary travel, during the
years that followed, I had cause to bless the refreshing and
restoring powers of heaven's best gift to man in the
tropics, the never-failing cocoanut.
I will not insult the reader by telling him all the uses
to which the tree and its various products are put, because
those are among the things we have all learned at our
first preparatory school ; how the natives in the cocoanut
countries make hats and mats and houses, and silver
fish-servers and brocaded dressing-gowns, and glace kid
boots with fourteen buttons (I think the list used to run
somewhat after that fashion it is the spirit if not the
letter) all out of the simple cocoanut tree ; a piece of
knowledge which, somehow or other, used to make us
feel vaguely virtuous and deserving, as if we had done
it all ourselves. . . .
But all this time the youth is standing like a smiling
bronze statue, holding the great ivory cup in his hands,
and waiting for us to drink. We do so in turn, Ganymede
carefully supporting the cup in his upcurved hands, and
tilting it with a fine regard for our needs, as the water
drops down in the nut like the tide on a sandy shore when
the moon calls back the sea.
Then we take out purses, and want to pay Ganymede ;
but he will not be paid, until it becomes plain to him
that the greatest politeness lies in yielding. He takes
our franc, and disappears among the trees, to return no
more. But in a minute, out from the bush comes running
the oddest little figure, a very old, grey-bearded man,
very gaily dressed in a green shirt and a lilac pareo, and
40 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
laden very heavily with ripe pineapples. We guess him
to be Ganymede's father, and see that our guess was right,
when he drops the whole heap of fruit upon the ground
at our feet, smiling and bowing and murmuring incompre-
hensively over it, and then begins to vanish like his son.
" Here stop ! " calls my companion. " We don't
want to take your fruit without buying it. Come back,
please come back ! "
The little old- gentleman trots back on his thin bare
legs, recalled more by the tone than the words, which he
obviously does not understand, and takes a hand of each
of us in his own brown fingers. He shakes hands with
us gently and firmly, shaking his head negatively at the
same time, and then, like the romantic youths of Early
Victorian novels, " turns, and is immediately lost to view
in the surrounding forest," carrying the honours of war,
indubitably, with himself.
" Well, they are real generous ! " declares my American
companion, as we go back to the tomb. " By the way,
Miss G , I guess you'd better not sit down on that
grass to wait for the rest. I wouldn't, if I was you."
" Why not ? it's as dry as dust."
" Because the natives say it's somehow or other they
didn't explain how infected with leprosy, and I guess
they ought to know ; there's plenty of it all over the
Pacific I rather thought that would hit you where
you lived."
It did. I got up as quickly as a grasshopper in a hurry.
Afterwards, on a leper island thousands of miles away
from Tahiti But that belongs to another place.
L , the ever-amiable, our half-caste landlady at the
little bungalow hotel, all overgrown with bougainvillea
and stephanotis, was grieved because we had seen nothing
in the way of " sights," and declared her intention of
giving a native dinner for us.
It was not very native, but it was very amusing. It
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 41
took place in the verandah of the hotel, under a galaxy
of Chinese lanterns, with an admiring audience of natives
crowding the whole roadway outside, and climbing up
the trees to look at us. This was principally because the
word had gone forth in Papeete (which owns the finest
gossip-market in the South Seas) that the English and
American visitors were going to appear in native dress,'
and nobody knew quite how far they meant to go there
being two or three sorts of costume which pass under that
classification.
The variety which we selected, however, was not very
sensational. The ladies borrowed from L : 's inex-
haustible store, draped themselves in one or other of her
flowing nightdress robes, let loose their hair, and crowned
themselves with twisted Tahitian coro.nets of gardenia
and tuberose. A scarlet flower behind each ear completed
the dress, and drew forth delighted squeaks from the
handmaidens of the hotel, and digs in the ribs from
L , who was nearly out of her mind with excitement
and enjoyment. Shoes were retained, contrary to L 's
entreaties, but corsets she would not permit, nor would
she allow a hairpin or hair-ribbon among the party. The
men guests wore white drill suits with a native pareo,
scarlet or yellow, tied round the waist. It was a gay-
looking party, on the whole, and the populace of Tahiti
seemed to enjoy the sight.
The dinner was served at a table, but most of the dishes
were on green leaves instead of plates, and L begged
us, almost with tears in her eyes, to eat the native dainties
with our fingers, as they tasted better that way. Little
gold-fish, baked and served with cocoanut sauce, were
among the items on the menu : sucking-pig, cooked in
a hole in the ground, fat little river crayfish, breadfruit
baked and served hot, with (I regret to say) European
butter, native puddings made of banana and breadfruit,
and the famous raw fish. Some of the guests would not
touch the latter, but. the rest of us thought it no worse
42 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
than raw oysters, and sampled it, with much enjoyment.
I give the receipt, for the benefit of any one who may
care to try it. Take any good white fish, cut it up into
pieces about two inches long, and place the latter, raw,
in lime-juice squeezed from fresh limes, or lemon-juice, if
limes are not to be had. Let the fish steep for half a day,
and serve it cold, with cocoanut sauce, the receipt for
which is as follows : Grate down the meat of a large
cocoanut, and pour a small cup of sea-water over it. Leave
it for three or four hours, and then strain several times
through muslin (the fine brown fibre off young cocoanut
shoots is a correct material, but the reader may not have
a cocoanut in his back garden). The water should at last
come out as thick and opaque as cream.
This is the true " milk of the cocoanut " about which
one so often hears. It is of immemorial antiquity in the
South Seas.
Captain Cook mentions it in his Voyages, and describes
the cocoanut shells full of it, that were given to every
man at a feast, in which to dip his food. When used as
a sauce for meat or fish, one or two fresh red peppers from
the nearest pepper bush are cut up and put in. Chili
pepper, judiciously used, is a fair substitute for the latter.
The sauce is also used for many native puddings and
sweet dishes, in which case it is made with fresh water
and the pepper is left out. As a fish sauce it is unsur-
passed, and may be recommended to gourmands as a
new sensation. It should be served in bowls of brown
cocoanut shell.
Breadfruit some of us tasted for the first time .at this
dinner. It was universally liked, though a few main-
tained that it resembled potato more than bread. I
found it very like the latter, with a suggestion of floury
cracknel biscuit. It is most satisfying and nourishing.
One never, in island travels, feels the want of fresh bread
when breadfruit is available. L had cooked it native
fashion, peeled and baked on hot stones in a pit in the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 43
ground. It is a good -sized fruit in its natural state,
about as large as a medium hothouse melon, and bright
green in colour. The skin is divided into lizard-like
lozenges, and the surface is very rough. Whether it is
indigenous to the islands or not, I cannot say, but it was
there when Cook came, and it grows wild very freely,
providing an immense store of natural food.
Taro we also had, baked native style. It is a plant in
use over almost all the Pacific, very easily cultivated and
rapidly producing immense bluish-coloured roots, which
look like mottled soap when cooked and served. It is
extremely dense and heavy, but pleasant to most tastes.
The white taro is a less common kind, somewhat lighter.
The mangoes that were served with the meal (among
many^ other fruits) were of a variety that is generally
supposed to be the finest in the world. No mango is
so large, so sweet, or so fine in grain, as the mango of
Tahiti, and none has less of the turpentine flavour that is
so much disliked by newcomers to tropical countries. It
is a commonplace of the islands that a mango can only be
eaten with comfort in a bath, and many of the guests that
evening would not have been sorry for a chance to put
the precept into practice, after struggling with one or two
mangoes, which were, of course, too solid to be sucked,
and much too juicy and sticky not to smear the hands and
the face of the consumers disastrously. ',...
L gave us many French dishes with our native
dinner, to suit all tastes, and gratify her own love of fine
cookery, but these would be of little interest to recount.
I cannot forget, however, how this true artiste of the
kitchen described the menu she had planned, on the
morning of the entertainment. She sat down beside me
on a sofa to tell the wondrous tale, and, as she recited
dish after dish, her voice rose higher and higher, and her
great black eyes burned, and she seized me by the arm
and almost hugged me in her excitement. When she
came to the savouries, tears of genuine emotion rose in
44 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
her eyes, and at the end of the whole long list, her feelings
overcame her like a flood, and, gasping out " Beignets
d'ananas a la Papeete ; glaces Venus en Cythere ; fro-
mage " she cast herself bodily into my arms and
sobbed with delight. She was fully fifteen stone, and the
weather was exceedingly warm, but I admired her artistic
fervour too much to tell her to sit up, and stop crying
over my clean muslin (as I should have liked to do),
because it seemed to me that L was really a true
artiste in her own way, and almost worthy to rank, in the
history of the kitchen, with Vatel the immortal, who
fell upon his sword and died, because the fish was late
for the royal dinner.
Of the other evening, when half a dozen guests of
mixed nationalities began, through a temptation of the
devil, to talk politics at ten o'clock on the verandah of
the fur that, metaphorically speaking, commenced to
fly when the American cast the Irish question into the
fray, and the Englishman vilified Erin, and the Irish-
woman, following the historical precedent, called the
Frenchwoman to her aid, and the latter in the prettiest
manner in the world, got up and closed her two small
hands round the throat of John Bull, and choked him into
silence it would not be necessary to tell, had not the sequel
been disastrous to the fair name of our steamship party
in Papeete. For a big banana spider, as big in the body
as half a crown, and nearly as hard, came suddenly out
from the stephanotis boughs, and, like a famous ancestor,
" sat down beside " a lady of the party. This caused the
politicians to rush to the aid of the lady, who had of course
mounted a chair and begun to scream. The spider proved
extremely difficult to kill, and had to be battered with
the legs of chairs for some time before he yielded up the
ghot- one guest, who found an empty whisky bottle,
and flattened the creature out with it, carrying off the
honours of the fray. After which excitement, we all
felt ready for bed, and went
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 45
" And in the morning, behold " the kindly L
smiling upon her guests, and remarking : " Dat was a
real big drunk you all having on the verandah, after I
gone to bed ! "
" Good heavens, L ! " exclaims Mrs. New England,
pale with horror, " what do you mean ? "
" Surely, Mrs. L , you do not suppose for an instant
any of our party were I can hardly say it ! " expostu-
lates a delicate-looking minister from the Southern States,
here for his lungs, who was very prominent last night in
arguing Ireland's right to " secede " if she liked.
" That's a good one, I must say," remarks John Bull,
rather indignantly.
But L only smiles on. She is always smiling.
" Dat don't go, Mr. " she says pleasantly. " I
couldn't sleep last night, for the way you all kicking up,
and the girl, she say you fighting. Madame she trying
to kill Mr. Bull, all the gentlemen smashing the leg of
the chairs, the lady scream and dis mornin', I findin' a
large whisky bottle, all drunk up."
I am privately choking with laughter in a corner, but
I cannot help feeling sorry for Mrs. New England, who
really looks as if about to faint.
" / don' mind ! " declares L delightedly. " Why,
I been thinking all dis time you haven't been enjoyin'
yourself at all. I like every one here they having a real
good time. Every one," she smiles and melts away
into the soft gloom of the drawing-room, where she sits
down, and begins to play softly thrumming, strangely
intoxicating Tahitian dance music on the piano.
" Elle est impayable ! " says the Frenchwoman, shrug-
ging her shoulders. " From all I hear of Tahiti, my dear
friends, I think you shall find yourselves without a chiffon
of character to-morrow. . . . But courage ! it is a thing
here the most superfluous."
Madame was a true prophet, I have reason to know ;
for many months after, the story of the orgy, held on
46 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
L 's verandah by the English and French and American
ladies and gentlemen, reached me in a remote corner
of the Pacific, as " the latest from Papeete." What I
wanted to know, and what I never shall know, for my
boat came in next day, and took me away to Raratonga
was whether the minister from the South eventually
died of the shock or not. I do not want to know about
the lady from New England, because I am quite certain
she did as certain as I am that I should have, myself,
and did not.
Of the prospects in Tahiti for settlers I cannot say
much. It was said, while I was in Papeete, that there
was practically no money in the place, and the traders, like
the Scilly Island washerfolk of well-known fame, merely
existed by trading with each other. This may have been
an exaggeration, or a temporary state of depression. The
vanilla trade, owing to a newly invented chemical substi-
tute, was not doing well, but judging by what I saw next
year in Fiji, the market must have recovered. The climate
of Tahiti is matchless for vanilla growing, and land is not
very difficult to get.'
Quite a number of small schooners seemed to be engaged
in the pearling trade with the Paumotus a group of islands
covering over a thousand miles of sea, and including
some of the richest pearl beds in the world (French
property). I never coveted anything more than I coveted
those dainty little vessels. Built in San Francisco, where
people know how to build schooners, they were finished
like yachts, and their snowy spread of cotton-cloth canvas,
when they put out to sea, and their graceful bird-like lines,
would have delighted the soul of Clarke Russell. One,
a thirty-ton vessel, with the neatest little saloon in the
world, fitted with shelves for trading ; and a captain's
cabin like a miniature liner stateroom, and a toy-like
galley forward, with a battery of shining saucepans, and
a spotless stove snowy paint on hull and deckhouses,
lightened with lines of turquoise blue splendid spiring
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 47
masts, varnished till they shone cool white awning
over the poop, and sparkling brasses about the compass
and the wheel, was so completely a craft after my own
heart that I longed to run away with her, or take her off
in my trunk to play with she seemed quite small enough,
though her " beat " covered many thousand miles of sea.
Poor little Maid of the Islands \ Her bones are bleaching
on a coral reef among the perilous pearl atolls, this two
years past, and her captain the cheerful, trim, good-
natured X , who could squeeze more knots an hour
out of his little craft than any other master in the port
save one, and could tell more lies about the Pacific in half
an hour, than any one from Chili to New Guinea of his
bones are coral made, down where the giant clam swings
his cruel valves together on wandering fish or streaming
weed, or limb of luckless diver, and where the dark tent-
acles of the great Polynesian devil-fish
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
The pitcher that goes to the well, and the schooner
that goes to the pearl islands, are apt to meet with the
same fate, in time. Nevertheless, tales about the
Paumotus are many, and interesting enough to atrract
adventurers from far, if they were known. How the
rumour of a big pearl gets out ; how a schooner sets forth
to run down the game, pursues it through shifting report
after report, from native exaggeration to native denial,
perhaps for months ; how it is found at last, and
triumphantly secured for a price not a tenth its worth ;
how one shipload of shell, bought on speculation, will
have a fortune in the first handful, and the next will yield
no more than the value of the shell itself this, and much
else, make good hearing.
" Look at that pearl," said a schooner captain to me
one day, showing me a little globe of light the size of a pea,
and as round as a marble. " I hunted that for a year,
48 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
off and on. The native that had it lived way off from
anywhere, but he knew a thing or two, and he wouldn't
part. I offered him goods, I offered him gin, I offered
him twenty pounds cash, but it was all no go. How
d'you think I got it at last ? Well, I'll tell you. I went
up to his island with the twenty pounds in a sack, all in
small silver, and when I came into his house, I poured it
all out in a heap on the mats. ' Ai, ai, ai ! ' he says, and
drops down on his knees in front of it it looked like a .
fortune to him. ' Will you sell now ? ' says I, and by
Jove, he did, and I carried it off with me. Worth ? Can't
say yet, but it'll run well into three figures."
The pearling in the French islands is strictly preserved,
and the terms on which it is obtainable are not known to
me. Poaching is a crime not by any means unheard of.
A glance at the map, and the extent of the Paumotu
group, will explain better than words why the policing
of the pearl bed must necessarily be imcomplete.
The steamer came in in due course, and carried me away
to the Cook Islands. Huaheine and Raiatea, in the
Society group, were called at on the way, but Bora-Bora
was left out, as it is not a regular port of call. I am glad
I did not land on Bora- Bora, and I never shall, if I can
help it. No place in the world could be so like a fairy
dream as Bora- Bora looked in the distance. It was
literally a castle in the air ; battlements and turrets,
built of vaporous blue clouds, springing steep and impreg-
nable from the diamond-dusted sea to the violet vault of
heaven. Fairy princesses lived there, one could not but
know ; dragons lurked in the dark caves low down on the
shore, and " magic casements, opening on the foam of
perilous seas," looked down from those far blue pinnacles.
Perhaps there is a village on Bora-Bora, with a dozen
traders, and an ugly concrete house or two, tin-roofed,
defacing the beauty of the palm-woven native homes,
and a whitewashed church with European windows, and
a school where the pretty native girls are taught to plait
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 49
back their flowing hair, and lay aside their scented wreaths
of jessamine and orange-blossom.
But if all these things are there, at least I do not know
it, and Bora-Bora can still remain to me my island of
Tir-na'n-Oge the fabled country which the mariners of
ancient Ireland sought through long ages of wandering,
and only saw upon the far horizon, never, through all the
years, setting foot upon the strand that they knew to be
the fairest in the world. If they had ever indeed landed
there. . . . But it is best for all of us to see our Tir-na'n-
Oge only in the far away.
Le seul reva, interesse,
Vivre sans reve, qu'est-ce ?
Moi, j'aime la Princesse
Lointaine.
CHAPTER III
Is It the Loveliest ? How they deal with the Beachcomber
Cockroaches and Local Colour The Robinson Crusoe-
Steamer Emigrating to the South Seas The Lands of
Plenty How to get an Island.
EVERY ONE has seen Raratonga, though few
travellers have looked on it with their own mortal
eyes.
Close your eyelids, and picture to yourself a South Sea
Island, of the kind that you used to imagine on holiday
afternoons long ago, when you wandered off down to the
shore alone, to sit in a cave and look seaward, and fancy
yourself Crusoe or Selkirk, and think the " long, long
thoughts " of youth. Dagger-shaped peaks, of splendid
purple and gorgeous green, set in a sky of flaming sapphire
sheer grey precipices, veiled with dropping wreaths of
flowery vine and creeper gossamer shreds of cloud,
garlanding untrodden heights, high above an ocean of
stainless blue shadowy gorges, sweeping shoreward from
the unseen heart of the hills white foam breaking upon
white sand on the beach, and sparkling sails afloat in the
bay is not this the picture that wanders ever among
The gleams and glooms that dart
Across the schoolboy's brain ?
It is not very like the average South Sea Island on the
whole but it is a faithful portrait of Raratonga, the jewel
of the Southern Seas.
Nothing is more hotly disputed than the claims of the
many beautiful islands among the numberless groups of
the Pacific to the crown of supremest loveliness. Tahiti
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 51
is awarded the apple of Paris by many, Honolulu by a
few, Samoa by all who have been there and nowhere else.
The few who have seen the quaint loveliness of Manahiki,
or Humphrey Island, uphold its claims among the highest,
and for myself, I have never been quite certain whether
the low atoll islands are not more lovely than all else,
because of their matchless colouring. But, if one pins
one's faith to the high islands, the accepted type of Pacific
loveliness, there is nothing more beautiful between 'Frisco
and Sydney, Yokohama and Cape Horn, than Raratonga,
chief island of the Cook archipelago.
These islands lie some sixteen hundred miles north-east
of New Zealand, and about six hundred miles to the west-
ward of Tahiti. They are eight in number, seven in-
habited, and one uninhabited, and cover about a hundred
and sixty miles of sea. The largest, Atiu, is about thirty
miles round, Raratonga, which is the principal island,
containing the seat of government and the only " white "
town, is twenty miles in circumference.
The whole group, as well as a number of outlying jslands
as much as six and seven hundred miles away, is under
the guardianship of the Resident Commissioner appointed
by New Zealand, to which colony the islands were annexed
in 1900. The government, as administered by Colonel
Gudgeon, a soldier who won much distinction in the days
of the New Zealand Maori wars, is all that could be desired.
The beachcomber element, which is so unpleasantly in
evidence in other groups, has been sternly discouraged in
the Cook Islands, the Commissioner having the right to
deport any one whose presence seems undesirable to the
cause of the general good. It is a right not infrequently
used. During my stay in the island, two doubtful
characters, recently come, were suspected of having com-
mitted a robbery that took place in the town. There
was practically no one else on the island who could have
done the deed, or would but direct evidence connecting
the strangers with the crime was not to be had. Under
52 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
these circumstances, the Commissioner simply deported
the men by the next steamer, giving no reason beyond the
fact that they were without means of support. There
were no more thefts. The colonel might, in the same
manner, have ordered myself away by the next steamer,
and compelled it to carry me to New Zealand, if he had
had reason to suppose that I was likely to disturb the peace
of the island in any way, or incite it to violence or crime.
The doctor also a Government official was empowered
to regulate the amount of liquor consumed by any resident,
if it appeared to exceed the permitted amount two
bottles of spirits a week. Under these circumstances,
one would expect Raratonga to be a little Arcadia of
innocence and virtue. If it was not quite that, it was,
and is, a credit to British Colonial rule, in all things
essential.
Before the annexation, the government was chiefly in
the hands of the Protestant missionaries, who, with the
best intentions in the world, carried things decidedly too
far in. the way of grandmotherly laws. Even white men
were forbidden to be out of doors after eight o'clock in the
evening, on pain of a heavy fine, and the offences for which
the natives were fined would be incredible, were they not
recorded in the Governmental reports of New Zealand.
In Raratonga of the older days (not yet ten years past)
a native who walked at dusk along the road with his sweet-
heart, his arm round her waist after the manner of sweet-
hearts all the world over, was obliged to carry a burning
torch in his hand, and was fined if he let it go out. If he
was found weeping over the grave of a woman to whom
he was not related (surely the strangest crime in the world)
he was again brought up and fined. These are only
samples of the vagaries of irresponsible missionary rule,
but they go far to prove that spiritual and temporal legis-
lation are better kept apart.
A Government accommodation house had been planned,
but not built, when I visited Raratonga, so I arranged, on
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 53
landing, to take an unused house by the week, and " do
for " myself, as there seemed no other way of living.
Scarcely had I taken possession of my quarters, however,
when the residents came down to call, and invite me to
stay in their house. I did not know any of them, and they
did not know me, but that did not matter we were not in
chilly England, where a whole country-side must discuss
your personal history, family connections, probable income,
and religious views, for a good six months, before deciding
whether you are likely to be an acquisition or not, and
calling accordingly. I began to understand, now, the
meaning of the term " colonial hospitality," which had
formerly fallen on uncomprehending ears. And when I
was settled down that evening in the most delightful of
bungalow houses, with a charming host and hostess, and
a pretty daughter, all doing their best to make me feel at
home, I realised that I was about to see something of the
true island life at last.
It began rather sooner than I could have wished. When
my new friends had gone to bed, and left me sitting up
alone in the hall to write letters for the morning's mail,
the local colour commenced to lay itself on somewhat
more rapidly and thickly than I desired. I am not par-
ticularly nervous about insects, but it is trying, when one
is quite new to the tropics, to see a horde of cockroaches
as large as mice, with fearsome waving horns, suddenly
appear from nowhere, and proceed to overrun the walls
and floor, with a hideous ticking noise. And when one
has steeled oneself to endure this horrid spectacle, it is
still more trying to be shocked by the silent irruption of
dozens of brown hairy hunting-spiders, each big enough
to straddle over a saucer, which dart about the walls on
their eight agile legs, and slay and eat the beetles, crunching
audibly in the silence of the night. . . . Truly, it was like
a waking nightmare.
Those cockroaches ! What I suffered from them, during
the year or two of island travel that followed ! How
54 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
they spoiled my tea, and ate my dresses (or parts of them),
and flew into my hair of moonlight nights, and climbed
into my berth on shipboard ! It was on a liner that shall
be nameless, very early in the course of my wanderings,
that I first discovered the tendency of the cockroach to
share the voyager's couch unasked, and never again did I
know unvexed and trustful sleep aboard a tropic ship. It
was a moonlight night, and I was lying looking peacefully
at the brilliantly silvered circle of my port, when suddenly
a horrid head, with waving feelers, lifted itself over the
edge of my berth and stared me coldly in the face. I hit
out, like the virtuous hero in a novel, and struck it straight
between the eyes, and it dropped to the floor with a dull
sickening thud, and lay there very still. I thought
gloatingly of how the blood would trickle out under my
door in the morning in a slow hideous stream, and how the
stewardess, bringing my early tea, would start and stop,
and say in an awestruck tone that one that night had met
his doom and so thinking, I fell asleep.
I woke, with one cockroach in my hair, chewing a plait,
and another nibbling my heel. I got up and looked round.
It was then that I wished I had never come away from
home, and that, since I had come, my sex forbade me to
go and berth in the hold. I was convinced that, if I could
have done so, I should have had a quiet night, because
the hold is the part of a ship where the cockroaches come
from, and. they had all come they were on the floor of
my cabin, and sitting about the quilt.
The hideous battle raged all night, and in the morning
I asked one of the mates for an axe, to help me through
the coming renewal of hostilities. He recommended
boracic acid instead, and I may record, for the benefit of
other travellers, that I really found it of some use.
To find out, as far as possible, what were the prospects
for settlers in some of the principal Pacific groups, was the
main object of my journey to the Islands. It had always
seemed to me that the practical side of Pacific life received
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 55
singularly little attention, in most books of travel. One
could never find out how a living was to be made in the
island world, what the cost of housekeeping might be,
what sort of society might be expected, whether the
climates were healthy, and so forth matters prosaic
enough, but often of more interest to readers than the
scenic descriptions and historical essays that run naturally
from the pen of any South Sea traveller.
Certainly, the romantic and picturesque side of the
islands is so obvious that it takes some determination,
and a good deal of actual hard work, to obtain any other
impressions whatever. But white human beings, even in
the islands, cannot live on romance alone, and many people,
in Britain and elsewhere, are always anxious to know how
the delightful dream of living in the South Seas may be
realised. Practical details about island life, therefore,
will take up the most of the present chapter, and readers
who prefer the lighter and more romantic vein, must turn
the pages a little further on.
The number of those who wish to settle in the Pacific
is by no means small.
The Pacific Ocean has always had a special interest for
the English, from the days of Drake s daring circum-
navigation, through the times of Captain Cook and the
somewhat misunderstood Bligh, of the Bounty, down to
the dawn of the twentieth century. The very name of
the South Seas reeks of adventure and romance. Every
boy at school has dreams of coral islands and rakish
schooners, sharks, and pearls ; most men retain a shame-
faced fancy for stories of peril and adventure in that
magical South Sea world, of whose charm and beauty every
one has heard, although very few are fortunate enough to
see it with their own bodily eyes. For the Pacific Islands
are, both in point of time and distance, about the remotest
spots on the surface of the globe, and they are also among
the most costly for the ordinary traveller to reach. Thus,
for the most part, the South Seas dream, which so many
56 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS .
hot-blooded young Saxons cherish, remains a dream only.
The youth who has a fancy for Canadian farming life, or
for stock-raising in Australasia, may gratify his desire with
the full approval of parents and guardians in private life,
and of Empire-builders in high places. But the British
possessions in the South Seas and what extensive pos-
session they are let Colonial maps prove may cry out for
settlers from the rainy season to the dry, and round again
to the rainy season once more, without attracting a single
colonist of the right kind.
What is the reason of this ? Where is the broken link ?
The British Pacific Islands need settlers ; young Britons
at home are only too ready to adventure themselves.
Why do they not ? There are several reasons. The first,
perhaps, is that neither party can hear the other. In
England few possess any information about the South
Sea Islands. In the Pacific the white residents (almost
all New Zealand traders and Government officials) are
possessed with an idea that only wastrels of the worst
kind drift out from England to the South Seas, and that
nothing better is to be looked for. The result is that at
the present date young Englishmen by the hundred are
losing their small capital as " pupils " on Canadian farms,
or are starving on the roads in South Africa, while all the
time the South Sea Islands hold out hands of peace and
plenty, begging humbly for a respectable white population.
The brown races are dying out with fearful rapidity ;
at their best they never touched the limitless capacities of
the golden Pacific soil. Its richness has always seemed to
the original inhabitants an excellent reason for abstaining
from cultivation. When the earth produced of itself every-
thing that was necessary for comfort, why trouble to
work it ? Now, however, when so many groups of fertile
islands have fallen into the hands of more progressive
nations, things are changed. The white man can live
happily and healthily in the Pacific ; he can obtain a good
eturn for a small capital at the best, and at the worst
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 57
cannot possibly suffer from either cold or hunger, since
neither exists in the South Seas. He can lease or buy land
from the natives at slight cost, work it with small labour,
and sell the product to a sure market. Honesty, sobriety,
and industry repay their possessor as almost nowhere
else in the world. Yet, with all this, the white settler in
the Pacific Islands is generally of a more or less undesirable
kind.
The " beachcomber " white, without friends, means, or
character ; the " remittance man," paid to keep as far
away from home as possible ; the travelling ne'er-do-well,
with a taste for novelties in dissipation, and a fancy for
being outside the limit of Press and post all these are
familiar figures in the Pacific. Kipling's Lost Legion
musters there by the score ; the living ghosts of men
whose memorial tablets are blinking white on the walls
of English country churches, walk by daylight along the
coral beaches. Only the steady man, the young energetic
man with a future and without a past, the man who can
get on without a three-weekly spree of the most torrid
kind, commonly keeps away. And these are just the men
that the " Islands " want. Local trading interest, religious
and otherwise, often does its best to keep them from coming,
through a natural, if scarcely praiseworthy, desire to retain
personal hold of everything worth holding. The Govern-
mental party of every group desires the respectable settler
with a little capital, and expresses its desire, as a rule,
in gentle wails delivered through Governmental reports
a method about as effective as putting one's head into a
cupboard to hail a 'bus in the street. The Press does not
recognise the existence of any habitable land in the
Pacific, outside Honolulu and Samoa. So the dead lock
continues.
I can see the Left Behind in the office raise his head at
this, and look through the muddy panes of the counting-
house window, or across the piles of summer goods on the
shop counters, out beyond the clanging street, and right
58 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
through the whole round world to the far-away Pacific
lands. He wants to get away so very badly, that poor
Left Behind, and he does not quite see his way to do it,
because every one discourages him if he hints at the sub-
ject, and he does not know how one could make a living,
out in those fairy lands that he wishes so much to see.
Well, I am on his side in this matter. If it is a crime to
long for a glimpse of the wonderful island world, to ache
for a life spent under the free winds of heaven, and a chance
of the danger, adventure, and excitement, which are as
strong wine to the heart of almost every young English-
man then it is a crime shared by the best that the nation
has ever known, and one which has done more to build
up the empire than all the parochial virtues ever owned
by a million Young Men's Improvement Societies put
together.
The Islands are not the place for the ne'er-do-well,
and I would also warn the exasperating young man, who
never did a square day's work in his life, never got into
trouble with his employers or his superiors, but always
found himself misunderstood, unappreciated, and in-
comprehensibly " sacked," with an excellent character,
at the first hint of slacking business that the islands will
not suit him either. If he comes out, he will not starve or
go to the workhouse, because you cannot die of hunger
where there is always enough vegetable food to keep the
laziest alive, and you do not need workhouses, under the
same happy conditions but he will " go native," and
there are some who would say he had better starve, a
good deal. There are men who have " gone native " in
most of the Pacific groups, living in the palm-leaf huts with
the villagers but a white man in a waist-cloth and a bush
of long hair, sleeping on a mat and living on wild fruit
and scraps given by the generous natives, drunk half the
time and infinitely lower, in his soberest hours, than the
coloured folk who unwisely put up with him, is not a
happy spectacle.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 59
The Cook Islands, which may be taken as a sample of
many other groups, are small to look at on -the map, and
not over large, when one counts up the number of square
miles. But one cannot fairly estimate the value of island
land by its extent. Much of it is so rich that every foot
has its worth, and that is by no means despicable. And,
in any case, there is plenty available for the small culti-
vator the man who has only a few hundred pounds, and
cannot afford to do things on the colossal scale that makes
big fortunes.
Among the productions of the group are pineapples,
custard apples, coffee, tobacco, pepper, mammee-apple or
paw-paw, granadilla, cocoa, cotton, vanilla, limes, lemons,
oranges, bananas, castor-oil, and many other useful plants,
besides a number of excellent vegetables, not known to
most Europeans. Many of the fruits above mentioned
grow practically wild. Bananas come to bearing in fifteen
months, cocoanuts in seven ydars, limes in four or five.
The water supply is good all round, and there is a monthly
steamer from Auckland.
The land in all the islands belongs to the natives, and
cannot usually be bought outright. Leases of any length,
can, however, be secured at very low rates, with the New
Zealand Government laws, administered through the
Resident, to back up the titles, so that a man who plants
cocoanuts the safest of island products may be sure
that his children and grandchildren will enjoy the fruits of
his labour.
In most of the outer islands the natives cannot use more
than a small fraction of the land, and are quite willing
to let large sections at a shilling or two an acre. In
Raratonga, the chief island, there has been more demand
for land, and prices are consequently higher ; also, the
chiefs are not always ready to let, even though they do
not use what they have. It may be said, however, of the
group as a whole, that there is land, and a prospect of a
good return for capital, ready for any reasonable number
6o IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
of settlers, if they bring habits of industry and a determina-
tion to succeed along with them .
There are two classes of possible settlers to be considered
the man with capital, and the man without.
How much does it take to start a man as a planter, and
what return can he expect ?
Taking the Cook Islands as a general example (but by
no means suggesting that the resources of the Pacific
begin and end there) the young Englishman wishing to
seek his fortune as a planter should have at least
500 to start on, exclusive of passage-money. He
can do excellently with a few hundreds more, but it
is as well to put things as low as possible. Copra the
dried kernel of the cocoanut is the usual, and the safest,
investment. It is always saleable, and the demand in-
creases year by year so much so, that the large soap-
making firms, who are the chief users of the product, are
of late planting out islands for themselves. The cost of
clearing and planting the land is about 5 an acre.
The rent, in the outer islands, should not exceed a couple of
shillings an acre. In about seven years, the returns begin
to come in, and in ten years' time the land should be
bringing in ^5 net profit for every acre of trees. This
is, of course, a long time to -wait, but bananas can grow
on the same land meantime, and will generally yield a
quick return. Once the cocoanuts start bearing, they
go on for sixty years or more, so that a copra plantation
is one of the best investments for a man who has others
to come after him.
Banana growing may be managed with less capital,
but the profits are not so sure, since fruit is perishable,
and cannot wait for the steamer as copra can. Coffee
has been grown, but is not of late years doing well, because
of something like a " ring " formed in New Zealand to
lower the prices. Cotton used to do excellently, and I
have never heard any satisfactory reason against its being
taken up afresh. It is running wild in a good many parts
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 61
of the group. The plants above mentioned, however,
by no means exhaust the resources of the islands, which
are suitable for growing anything that will live in the
tropics, and are fortunately not subject to the destructive
hurricanes that from time to time do so much damage
in Tahiti and the Fijis. Hurricanes are not absolutely
unknown, but they are very rare, and not of the worst
kind.
The cost of living is not very serious, but it must not
be supposed that the settlers can live decently and like
white men, on nothing a year. A house costs something
to put up, and furniture to a certain small amount is
necessary, clothes do not grow on the cocoanut tree, nor do
lamps and kerosene, or tools and nails, or fishing lines, or
flour and bacon and tea and tinned butter, and the few
groceries that the settler may need. Still, with care, a
single man can live quite respectably on fifty pounds a
year, and enjoy, in all probability, better health than he
ha.s had at home.
What the time of waiting will cost the copra planter,
each one must work out for himself. He will do best to
spend his capital gradually, planting as he can afford.
The returns will come in only by degrees, but he will be
saved the mortification of seeing a promising plantation
leave his possession for a third of its value, simply because
he cannot afford to wait until the profits begin.
Copra, the chief article of commerce of the Pacific, is
very easily prepared. The cocoanuts, when ripe, are
husked, and emptied, and the kernels, as a rule, left to dry
in the sun, though some few planters use artificial heat.
Bagging is the only other operation necessary.
Bananas are often shipped clumsily and carelessly, in.
unprotected bunches. It would be much better to pack
them in leaves and crate them, as is done in the Canary
Islands, where the banana trade is the principal support
of the country. Oranges are usually shipped in crates.
They grow wild all over the Cook group, and are not
62 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
attended to in any way, but in spite of this, the orange
trade with New Zealand is by no means despicable.
Vanilla is not cultivated for market in these islands,
but it would probably repay the experimenter. It does
well in most of the Pacific groups, and the returns begin
in three years from planting.
Island planters, as a race, seem to be the most con-
servative of men, and very shy of trying anything new
and unproved. There are, of course, good reasons for
this, but there are also excellent arguments in favour of
exploiting fresh fields. The following brief hints may
prove fruitful to enterprising minds.
Only one kind of banana the sort familiar at home
is usually grown for trade. There are many varieties,
however, and some of the very best travel quite as well as
the commonplace " China " sort. The large red banana,
sometimes called the Aitutaki banana, sometimes the
peach banana, on account of its delicate peach-like flavour,
is a fruit that would become the fashion at once, if it could
be put on the market. One or two planters have gone so
far as to send consignments down to New Zealand, but,
finding that these did not sell on account of the unusual
colour of the fruit, they never made another attempt.
At the time of my visit, in 1904, the red banana was
practically unobtainable in New Zealand or Australia.
A little intelligent co-operation on the part of the buyers
would probably get over the difficulty.
The same may^ be said of limes, a fruit which grows wild
very freely. The lime is like a small, round-shaped lemon,
and is not an attractive fruit in appearance. It also
suffers under the disadvantage of being very badly repre-
sented as to flavour by the bottled " shop " lime-juice,
with which the taste of the fresh lime has hardly any-
thing in common. Where it can be obtained fresh, how-
ever, no one ever thinks of using lemon as a flavouring
in food or drink. The lime is incomparably more delicate
and refreshing than the best lemon ever grown. For
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 63
some unknown reason, however, it is not used in New
Zealand, or in the cities of Australia, to which it could
be easily and profitably exported from many of the Pacific
groups. Instead, the juice of limes is squeezed out by a
very rough process, the fruit being run through a wooden
hand-press, and is shipped away in casks. The lime
trade would certainly rival the orange trade, if worked
up.
Dried bananas have money in them, and the industry
is especially adapted to some of the lesser Cook Islands,
where steamer calls are at present irregular. The dried
and pressed banana is better than the fig, and is considered
a great delicacy by the few people in the colonies who have
tried it. The Cook Islanders peel the fruit, and leave it
to dry in the sun. When it is shrunk, dark, and sticky
with its own sugar, they compress it into neat little packets
covered with dried banana leaf, and tied with banana
fibre. These will keep good for many months. Up to the
present, the trade is extremely small, but there is no
reason why it should not be increased.
One of the chief troubles of the settler is the guava bush,
which runs wild all over the islands, and is extremely hard
to destroy. It bears quantities of excellent fruit, but
guavas do not pay for exporting, so no one, apparently, has
thought of making the island pest profitable. And yet,
when I went down to New Zealand, which is in direct
communication with the Cook Islands and less than a week
away, I found the price of guava jelly in the shops was
higher than it is at home. Asked why no one in the islands
sent jelly for sale, the grocers said it was because jampots
were not made in New Zealand, and had to be imported
if wanted. Since most jams in the colonies are sold in tins,
this did not appear to me an unanswerable argument.
Tins are made in the colonies, and the process of tinning jam
or jelly should not be beyond amateur powers. Moreover,
common tumblers (which are also made in New Zealand)
are a good and profitable way of putting up jellies ; pur-
64 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
chasers are always willing to pay extra for the advantage
of getting something useful along with the. dainty itself.
Another item : Dried peppers bring a good price per
ounce, and fine Chili pepper grows wild everywhere. So
far, trade is nil.
Another : One of the commonest plants in the Southern
Pacific, a weed bearing a bright red flower almost exactly
like the pine-cone in shape, contains, in the flower, a
quantity of white watery liquid, which is declared by the
natives, and by many of the whites, to be an exceptionally
fine hair tonic. No one, so far as I know, has tried to
make anything out of this, or out of the wild castor oil,
which is said to be of good quality.
If the settler cannot find some useful hint among these,
he may be able to discover a few on the spot for himself.
The second class of settler the man without capital,
or with only a little is a pariah everywhere. No colony
wants him, agents warn him away, friends write to him
begging him to stay where he is, and not tempt fortune by
going out unprovided with plenty of cash. No doubt there
is reason on the side of the discouragers ; but there is not
a colony in the world, all the same, where you shall not
find the man who came out without capital, who endured a
few years of hard work and short commons, began to get
on, began to save, went on getting on and saving, and by-
and-by became one of the most successful men in the place.
Whereupon as a rule he becomes an adviser in his turn,
and solemnly counsels young men of every kind against
the imprudence of tempting fortune with an empty purse.
For all that, and all that, young Britons will continue
to do what they are advised not to, and ships will carry out
many a man to the far wild countries whose only gold is the
gold of youth and health and a brave heart. " Sink or
swim " is the motto of this kind of colonist, and if he often
goes under, he very often floats on the top, and comes in on
the flood-tide of good luck. " Fortune favours the brave "
a proverb none the less true because of its age.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 65
To have an island of one's own, in the beautiful South
Seas, to live remote from strain and worry, and out of
the clash and roar of twentieth-century civilisation to
pass one's days in a land of perpetual summer ; work, but
own no master, possess a country (small though it may be)
yet know none of the troubles of sovereignty this is an
ambition of which no one need be ashamed, even though
it appear contemptible and even reprehensible to " Samuel
Budgett, the Successful Merchant." The planter with a
fair amount of capital can realise the dream almost any
day, fpr every big group in the Pacific has many small
unoccupied islands which can be rented for a song, and
if the newcomer is made of stuff that can stand being totally
deprived of theatres, clubs, music halls, daily posts and
papers, and a good many other charms (or burdens) of city
life, he has only to pick^and choose, secure a good title to
his island, decide what he means to grow on it, get his
house built, and settle down at once.
But people who have very little money cherish the same
ambition, often enough: There are thousands of men in
the United Kingdom to whom a South Sea Island of their
own would be heaven only they see no way of getting
it. The desire comes, without doubt, of generations of
insular ancestors. It is the " Englishman's house is
his castle" idea carried a step further than usual, that
is all ; and the boy that never wholly dies in the heart of
every Briton is always ready to wake up and rejoice at the
thought.
What is the moneyless man to do ?
Well, first of all, he must get out to Sydney or Auck-
land, each being a port from which island vessels constantly
sail, and with which island trade is closely concerned. It
will not cost him so much as he thinks. If he goes by
Auckland, he can get a third-class ticket from London for
fifteen pounds, and Sydney is little more. Arrived, he
will make use of the information he has, of course, obtained
in London, from the offices of the Agent-General for New
66 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Zealand (or Australia, as the case may be) and try and get
a job to keep him on his feet while he looks about. If
he can do any kind of manual labour, he will not be at a
loss and if he cannot, or will not, he had much better
stay at home on an office stool within sound of Bow
Bells, and leave the far countries to men of tougher
material.
In Sydney or Auckland he will find a good many firms
connected with island trading interests, many of whom
own trading stores dotted about the whole Pacific. It is
often possible to obtain a job from one of these, jf the
newcomer is capable and steady. In this case, the way of
getting up to the islands is clear, and the work of copra
trading, keeping store for native customers, fruit-buying and
shipping on the spot, is the best possible training for an
independent position. If this proves a vain hope (it need
not, in the case of a good man, if one may judge by the
wretched incapables who occupy the trader's post in many
islands) our adventurer must try to raise the cost of a passage
as best he can, and see what he can get to do among the
white people of the group he has selected, when he arrives.
There are so many useless wastrels in most of the islands,
that character and capability are to a certain extent capital
in themselves. Some one is generally in want of a planta-
tion overseer to replace a drunken employee some one
else would be glad of a handy man to help with house-
building of the simple island kind and in many islands,
board and lodging, and a little over, would be easily ob-
tainable by any educated man, .who would undertake to
teach the children of the white settlers. There are groups
in which no one is allowed to land who does not possess a
certain minimum of cash, but it is not in any case that I
know of more than ten pounds, and most islands have no
such regulation.
Once so far on his journey, the would-be island owner
must think out the rest for himself. There is sure to be
a small island or two for rent, and there will probably be
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 67
means of making money by slow degrees in the group
itself. Where the will is, the way will be found.
The popular dream of finding and taking possession of
an unoccupied island somewhere or other, and " squatting "
there unopposed, is a dream and nothing more. The great
European nations have long since parcelled out among
themselves all the groups worth having, and rent or
purchase is the only way to acquire land. Far-away
separate islands, remote from everywhere, are still to be had
for nothing in a few instances, but they are not desirable
possessions, unless the owner can afford a private sailing
vessel, and in any case what has not been picked up is little
worth picking in these days.
So much for the how and where of acquiring islands.
I shall have one or two definite instances to give in another
chapter.
CHAPTER IV
Where are the Six Thousand ? Calling on the Queen A
Victoria of the Pacific The Prince sleeps softly The
Mystical Power of the Mana How Islanders can die A
Depressing Palace Round the Wonderful Roadway The
Home of Queen Tinomana A Princess's Love Story
Once on Board the Schooner ! The Incredible Crabs
Depravity of a Mor Kiri-kiri.
A HUNDRED years ago, Raratonga had six thousand
native inhabitants, and was a very flourishing
heathen country, where cannibalism was all the fashion,
murder of shipwrecked sailors a common custom, and
raids upon neighbouring islands the chief diversion.
There is no doubt that the Raratongan of those days
compared none too well with the Tahitian, who at the
worst never was an habitual cannibal, and was almost
always friendly to strangers. Williams was the first
missionary to arrive in the earlier part of the last century,
' and the complete conversion of the island was rapid ;
the Raratongan in a few years was no longer cannibal, no
longer warlike, had become hospitable and friendly to
travellers, had learned to wear clothes (a good deal more
than he wanted or should have had, but the missionary
of the early days really did not know what a fatal thing
he was doing, when he enforced the wearing of white man's
raiment on the unclothed native, and thereby taught him
to catch cold, and die of chest diseases). The island had
(and has) a large school for the training of mission teachers,
and a church and mission house not to be matched in the
Pacific for magnificence, and was on the whole a model
of most of the virtues, compared with what it once had been.
There were, and are, drawbacks to the missionary rule,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 69
but these have been discussed so freely in almost every
book of Pacific travel ever written, that I do not feel it
necessary to say over again what has so often been said
before. The missionaries certainly civilised the islands,
and made them safe to live in. Concurrently with this
desirable result, others not so desirable took place, the
fruit, in some cases, of irresponsible authority exercised
by semi-educated men ; in others, of the inevitable fate
that follows the introduction of civilisation to primitive
races. The Raratongan, like all the other brown folk
of the islands, was asked to leap, almost at once, the gulf
between utter savagery and comparative civilisation, that
had taken his instructors all the time between the Roman
Conquest and the end of the Dark Ages to overpass. With
the docility of the true Polynesian, he did his best to
comply. It was not his fault and not, one must fairly
say, the fault of the missionary either, save in a minor
degree that the effort meant death to him.
There are not nineteen hundred Raratongans living now
in the fertile little country that used to support six thou-
sand of their ancestors. There are not enough babies in
the island to carry on the population at half its present
level, in the future. Not one of the "chief" families,
of whom there are a dozen or so, has any living children
at all. Consumption is common, and on the increase ;
more serious diseases are commoner still. A Raratongan
seldom lives to be very old, and he almost always dies
without resistance or regret. The islanders are happy
and sunny in their own quiet way, but the backbone of
life has been broken for them, and in the promise of the
future, grey or golden, they have no share. To-day is
theirs, but they have no to-morrow.
The Arikis, or chiefs, to whom the principal power once
belonged, and who still retain much importance, regret this
state of affairs in an amiable, fatalistic way, but do not
trouble themselves very much over it. They are for the
most part of the opinion of Sir Boyle Roche about the
3t
70 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
claims of posterity ; and anyhow, they have their fruit
trading to think about, and the next public dancing and
singing party, and the last illegal beer-brewing up in the
hills so the decadence of their country sits lightly on their
minds.
These Arikis are one and all inferior to the ruling
sovereign, Queen Makea, who still contrives to retain
a great deal of quiet power in her shapely old hands, in
spite of the fact that she is nominally deposed, and her
country owned by New Zealand. I had not been in
Raratonga more than a day or two, when my hosts took
me to call upon the queen, intimating that she would feel
hurt if the newcomer was not presented to her.
We walked through the blazing sun of the tropic after-
noon, down the palm-shaded main street of Avarua town,
to the great grassy enclosure that surrounds the palace
of the queen. One enters through a neat white gate ;
inside are one or two small houses, a number of palms and
flowering bushes, and at the far end, a stately two-storeyed
building constructed of whitewashed concrete, with big
railed-in verandahs, and handsome arched windows.
This is Makea's palace, but her visitors do not go there
to look for her. In true South Sea Islander fashion, she
keeps a house for show and one for use. The islander,
though he aspires when " civilised," to own a big concrete
house, " all same papalangi " (white man), does not really
like living in a building that shuts out the air. He dis-
covered the fresh-air system long before it was thought of
by the folk who discovered him, and his own houses are
always made of small poles or saplings, set without any
filling, so that the whole building is as airy as a birdcage, and
almost as transparent. In this he lives, while the big
concrete house, with its Auckland made tables, chairs,
and beds, and the red and blue table-cloths, and horrible
gilt lamps fringed with cut glass lustres, and shrieking
oleograph of King Edward in his coronation robes, is
kept strictly for show, and perhaps for an occasional
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 71
festival, such as a wedding party. It is an odd custom,
but sensible, on the whole.
Makea's favourite house is a pretty little reed and thatch
villa several miles out in the country. \Vhen she is in
town, she makes some concession to state by living in a
small one-storeyed cottage, with a thatch and a verandah,
and not much else, close beside her big palace. We found
her at the cottage when we called, sitting on the verandah
upon an ironwood couch, and petting a little turtle of which
she is very fond. It seems a curious sort of creature to
adore, but an elderly lady must have her little pet of some
kind. In other climes, it is a pug, a parrot, or a cat. Here,
the little turtle is considered chic, so the queen has one,
the turtle having been always considered a perquisite of
royalty in the old days, when the chiefs had the best of
everything, even down to the choicest tit-bits of the roasted
enemy, while the commonalty had to put up with what they
could get.
I was introduced to the queen, who shook hands politely,
and sent one of her handmaids for chairs. These being
brought, my hostess and I sat down, and the latter con-
versed with Makea in Raratongan, translating a few con-
ventional politenesses from myself, and conveying others
to me in return. The queen wanted to know how I liked
the island, if I had really come all the way from England,
as she had heard, whether I was not afraid to travel so
far alone, how long I hoped to stay, and so forth. All the
time, as we talked, her keen black eyes were scanning me
silently, rapidly, comprehensively, and making their own
judgment, quite independently of the conversation and its
inevitable formalities. And I, on my side, was gazing,
I fear with some rudeness, at the very remarkable figure
before me.
Makea, since the death of her husband, Prince Ngamaru,
a few years ago, has laid aside all vanities of dress, and
wears only the simplest of black robes, made loose and
flowing from the neck in island fashion. She is supposed
72 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
to be at least seventy years of age, and she is extremely
stout, even for her'height, which is well over six feet. Yet
a more impressive figure than this aged, deposed, uncrowned
sovereign, in her robe of shabby black, I have never seen.
Wisdom, kindliness, and dignity are written large on her
fine old face, which has more than a touch of resemblance
to the late Queen Victoria. And oh, the shrewdness, the
ability, the keen judgment of men and things, that look
out from those brown, deep-set eyes, handsome enough,
even in old age, to hint at the queen-like beauty that once
belonged to this island queen !
Makea was always known as a wise, just, and very
powerful sovereign. She ruled over the whole Cook
group, and her word was law everywhere, even to the
Prince Consort, the warlike Ngamaru, who .to the very last
retained some traces of his heathen upbringing, and used
to be seen, in the island councils of only a few years ago,
making the horrible cannibal gesture which signifies in un-
mistakable pantomime, " I will tear the meat from your
bones with my teeth ! " at any other council member who
presumed to disagree with him. Their married life was a
happy one, in spite of the prince's violent character, and
when he died, the widowed queen took all her splendid
robes of velvet, silk, and satin, gorgeously trimmed with
gold, tore them in fragments, and cast them into his grave,
so that he might lie soft, as befitted the prince who had
been loved so well by such a queen.
Makea holds much of the real power in her hands to-day,
for all that the islands are the property of the British
Crown, and administered by a Commissioner. The Rara-
tongan is submissive to chiefs by nature, and the queen,
though uncrowned, is still reverenced and feared almost
as much as of old. It is firmly believed that she possesses
the mystic power known as " mana " among the Maori
races, and this, as it gives the owner power to slay at will,
is greatly feared. The word is almost untranslatable,
meaning, perhaps, something like " prestige," " kudos,"
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 73
or the old English " glamour." It includes, among other
gifts, second sight to a certain extent, the power to bring
good or evil luck, and the ability already mentioned to
deal death at will.
This last may sound like fiction. It is nothing of the
sort, it is plain, bald fact, as any one who has ever lived
in the islands can testify. There is nothing more commonly
known in the South Seas than the weird power possessed
by kings and heroes to slay with a word, and instances of
its exercise could be found in every group.
Makea does not use it now, so they say. She is old :
like aged folks in other places, she wants to " make her
soul," and it can readily be imagined that the mission
authorities do not approve of such heathen proceedings.
Still, there is not a native in Raratonga who does not
believe that she could strike him dead with a wish, any
day in the week, if she chose : and there are not a few
who can tell you that in the days long ago, she exercised
the power.
" Makea, she never rude, because she great chief,"
said a relation of the royal family to me one day. " She
never say to any one, ' You go die ! ' I think. She only
saying, some time, ' I wish I never seeing you again ! '
and then the people he go away, very sorry, and by-n'-by
he die some day, some week, I don' know but he dvin'
all right, very quick, you bet ! "
The power to die at will seems to be a heritage of the
island races, though the power to live, when a chief bids
them set sail on the dark seas of the unknown, is not
theirs. Suicide, carried out without the aid of weapons
or poisons of any kind, is not at all uncommon. A man
or woman who is tired of life, or bitterly offended with
any one, will often lie down on the mats, turn his face, like
David of old, to the wall, and simply flicker out like a
torch extinguished by the wind. There was once a white
schooner captain, who had quarrelled with his native
crew ; and the crew, to pay him out, lay down and declared
74 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
they would die to spite him. . . . But this is about Makea
the Queen, not about the godless brutal captain, and the
measures he took to prevent his men from taking passage
in a body across the Styx. They didn't go after all, and
they were sore and sorry men when they made the island
port, and the captain, who was a very ill-educated person,
boasted far and wide for many a day after that, that he
would exceedingly well learn any exceedingly objectionable
nigger who offered to go and die on him again and that
is all that I must say about it, for more reasons than
one.
The queen, after a little conversation, punctuated by
intervals of fanning and smiling (and a more charming
smile than Makea's, you might search the whole South
Seas to find), sent a girl up a tree for cocoanuts, and
offered us the inevitable cocoanut water and bananas,
without which no island call is complete. Afterwards,
when we rose to go, she sent a handmaid with us to take us
over the palace, of which she is, naturally, very proud,
though she never enters it except on the rare occasion of
some great festival.
The palace proved to be as uninteresting as the queen
herself was interesting and attractive. It had a stuffy,
shut-up smell, and it was furnished in the worst of European
taste, with crude ugly sofas and chairs, tables covered with
cheap- jack Manchester trinkets, and staring mirrors and
pictures partly sacred art, of a kind remarkably well
calculated to promote the cause of heathenism, and partly
portraits, nearly as bad as those one sees in the spring
exhibitions at home. There were two or three saloons
or drawing-rooms, all much alike, on the lower storey.
Upstairs (it is only a very palatial island house that owns
an upstairs) there were several bedrooms, furnished with
large costly bedsteads of mahogany and other handsome
woods, and big massive wardrobes and tables all unused,
and likely to remain so. The place was depressing on the
whole, and I was glad to get out of it into the cheerful
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 75
sun, although the heat at this hour of the afternoon was
really outrageous.
Another afternoon, I drove out to see Queen Tinomana,
a potentate only second to Makea in influence. Tinomana,
like Makea, is a dynastic name, and is always borne by the
high chief, man or woman, who is hereditary sovereign
of a certain district. The present holder of the title is a
woman, and therefore queen.
What a drive it was ! The roadway round the island
is celebrated all over the Pacific, and with justice, for
nothing more lovely than this twenty-mile ribbon of
tropic splendour is to be found beneath the Southern
Cross. One drives in a buggy of colonial pattern, light,
easy-running, and fast, and the rough little island horse
makes short work of the miles of dazzling white sandy
road that circle the shores of the bright lagoon. On one
side rises the forest, green and rich and gorgeous beyond
all that the dwellers of the dark North could possibly
imagine, and opening now and then to display picture
after picture, in a long gallery of magnificent mountain
views mountains blue as the sea, mountains purple as
amethyst, mountains sharp like spear-heads, towered
and buttressed like grand cathedrals, scarped into grey
precipices where a bat could scarcely cling, and cloven
into green gorges bright with falling streams. On the
other, the palms and thick undergrowth hardly veil the vivid
gleam of the emerald lagoon lying within the white- toothed
barrier reef, where all day long the surf of the great Pacific
creams and froths and pours. By the verge of the coral
beach that burns like white fire in the merciless sun, the
exquisite ironwood tree trails its delicate tresses above the
sand, so that, if you leave the carriage to follow on the
road, and walk down by the beach, you shall catch the
green glow of the water, and the pearly sparkle of the reef,
through a drooping veil of leafage fine as a mermaid's
hair. Sometimes the buggy runs for a mile or two through
thick woods of this lovely tree, where the road is carpeted
76 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
thickly with the fallen needles of foliage, so that the wheels
run without sound, and you may catch the Eolian harp-
song of the leaves, sighing ceaselessly and sadly
Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
when the evening wind gets up and the sun drops low on
the lagoon.
The myths of the Pacific are marvellous in their way,
but they pass over unnoticed much that could not have
escaped the net of folk-lore and poetry in Northern lands.
That the lovely ironwood, a tree with leaves like mermaid's
locks, and the voice of a mermaid's song in its whispering
boughs, should stand bare of legend or romance on the
shores of a sea that is itself the very home of wonder,
strikes the Northern mind with a sense of strange incon-
gruity. But the soul of the islands is not the soul of the
continents, and the poet of the Pacific is still to be born.
Sometimes, again, the little buggy rattles over white
coral sand and gravel, on a stretch of road that is fairly
buried in the forest. The sun is cut off overhead, and
only a soft green glow sifts through. The palm-tree
stems sweep upward, tall and white, the gigantic " maupei "
rears aloft its hollow buttressed stems, carved out into
caverns that would delight the soul of a modern Crusoe,
and drops big chestnuts, floury and sweet, upon the road
as we pass. The " utu," or Barringtonia Speciosa, one of
the most beautiful of island trees, towers a hundred feet
into the warm glow above, its brilliant varnished leaves,
nearly a foot long, and its strange rose and white flowers,
shaped like feather-dusters, marking it out unmistakably
from the general tangle of interlacing boughs, and crowding
trunks and long liana ropes, green and brown, that run
from tree to tree. If you were lost in the bush, and
thirsty, one of those lianas would provide you with waters,
were you learned enough in wood lore to slash it with
your knife, and let the pure refreshing juice trickle forth.
You might gather wild fruit of many kinds, too, and wild
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 77
roots, mealy and nourishing, or dainty and sweet. And at
night, you might c*eep into your hollow tree, or lie down on
the warm sand of the shore, with nothing worse to fear
than a mosquito or two.
There are no wild beasts in any of the Pacific Islands,
save an occasional boar, which always lives remote from
men in the hills, and is much readier to run away than
to annoy. There are no poisonous snakes, either, taran-
tulas, or deadly centipedes and scorpions. I cannot
honestly say that the two latter creatures do not exist, but
they very seldom bite or sting any one who does not go
barefooted, and their venom is not deadly, though painful.
On almost every tree, as we rattle along through the
forest, my hostess and I can see the beautiful bird's-nest
fern, looking like a hanging basket of greenery. We
have not time to stop to-day, but we shall have to go out
some other afternoon and cut down a few of the smaller
ones for table decoration, for there is a dinner party coming
off, and we are short of pot plants for the rooms. Young
palms, most graceful of all green things, shoot up like little
fountains in the clearings, some of the smaller ones still
root-bound by the large brown nut from which they have
sprung. One would never think these dainty ball-room
palms were related in any way to the stately white columns
spiring high above them, for the full-grown palm is all
stem and scarcely any top, in comparison, while the young
palm, a mass of magnificent spreading fronds, rises from a
short bulb-like trunk that suggests nothing less than
further growth.
The drive is six good miles, but it seems only too short.
In a very little while, we have reached Queen Tinomana's
village a picturesque little grassy town, with brown
thatched huts, and white concrete cottages washed with
coral lime, and gay red and yellow leaved ti trees standing
before almost every door and the queen's own palace, a
handsome two-storeyed house, quite as fine as Makea's,
stands up in front of us.
78 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Passing by this piece of European splendour, we go to
draw a more likely covert, and ere long flush our quarry in
a little creeper- wreathed cottage, hidden behind bushes
of deliciously scented frangipani and blazing red hibiscus.
The queen is on the verandah, seated, like Makea, on an
ironwood sofa of state. She sits here most of the day,
having very little in the way of government to do, and no
desire to trouble her amiable head with the white woman's
laborious methods of killing time. Sometimes she plaits
a hat to amuse herself, being accomplished in this favourite
Raratongan art a sailor hat with a hard crown and stiff
brim, and a good deal of neat but lacy fancywork in the
twisting of the plait. Sometimes she receives friends, and
hears gossip. Sometimes, she sleeps on the sofa, and wakes
up to suck oranges and fall asleep again. The strenuous
life is not the life beloved of Tinomana, nor (one may hint
in the smallest of whispers) would her much more strenuous
sister queen encourage any developments in that direction.
It is well, under the circumstances, that both are suited
by their respective roles, otherwise the somewhat difficult
lot of the Resident Commissioner might be rendered even
more trying than it is.
Tinomana is not young, and she is not lovely now,
though one can see that she has been beautiful, as so
many of the soft-eyed island women are, long ago. She has
had her romance, however, and as we sit on her verandah,
drinking and eating the cocoanut and banana of ceremony,
the grey-haired white man who is husband of the queen
tells the story to me of her love and his, just as it happened,
once upon a time.
In 1874 the Cook Islands were an independent group,
governed by their own chiefs, or Arikis. The Arikis
had much more power in those days than they are now
allowed to exercise. They could order the execution of
any subject for any cause ; they could make war and
end it : and no ship dared to call at the islands without
their permission. They owned, as they still own, all the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 79
land, and their wealth of various kinds made them, in the
eyes of the natives, millionaires as well as sovereigns.
" Women's rights " were a novelty to England thirty
years ago, but in the Cook Islands they were fully recog-
nised, even at that early period. The most powerful of
the Arikis was Makea then a girl, now an elderly woman,
but always every inch a queen, and always keeping a firm
hand on the sceptre of Raratonga. Any Cook Islands
postage-stamp will show Makea as she was some ten years
ago. In 1874 Makea and her consort, Ngamaru, were
making plans for the marrying of Tinomana, a young
Raratongan princess closely related to Makea. Tinomana
would shortly become an Ariki, or queen, herself, and her
matrimonial affairs were, in consequence, of considerable
importance.
What the plans of Raratonga's rulers for Tinomana
may have been matters little. Tinomana was pretty, with
splendid long black hair, large soft brown eyes, an excellent
profile, and a complexion little darker than a Spaniard's.
She was also self-willed, and could keep a secret as close
as wax when she so desired. She had a secret at that
time, and it concerned no South Sea Islander,- but a certain
good-looking young Anglo-American named John Salmon
(grandson of a Ramsgate sea-captain, Thomas Dunnett),
who had lately landed at Raratonga from the trading
schooner Venus, and had been enjoying a good deal of
the pretty princess's society, unknown to the gossips of
the island. It was a case of love at first sight ; for the
two had not been more than a few days acquainted when
they came privately to James Chalmers, the famous
missionary, then resident in Raratonga, and begged for a
secret marriage.
James Chalmers refused promptly to have anything
to do with the matter, and furthermore told Tinomana
that he would never marry her to any white man, no
matter who it might be. In his opinion such a marriage
would be .certain to cause endless trouble with the other
8o IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Arikis apart from the fact that Queen Makea was against
it. So the lovers went away disconsolate. Raratonga
was keeping holiday at the time, because a great war-
canoe was to be launched immediately, and a dance and
feast were in preparation. But Tinomana and her lover
were out of tune with the festivities, and no woman in
the island prepared her stephanotis and hibiscus garlands
for the feast, or plaited baskets of green palm leaves to
carry contributions of baked sucking-pig and pineapples,
with as heavy a heart as the little princess.
On the day of the feast an idea came to Salmon. There
were two schooners lying in Avarua harbour. One, the
Coronet, had for a captain a man named Rose, who was as
much opposed to Salmon's marriage as Chalmers himself.
The Humboldt schooner, on the other hand, had a friend
of Salmon's in command. From him some help might be
expected. Salmon visited him secretly, found that he was
willing to assist, and arranged for an elopement that very
night. Tinomana was willing ; nobody suspected ; and
the feast would furnish a capital opportunity.
There was no moon that evening, happily for the lovers,
for the smaHest sign would have awaked the suspicions
of the watching Coronet. When the feast had begun, and
all Raratonga was making merry with pig and baked
banana, raw fish and pineapple beer, Tinomana contrived
to slip away and get back to her house. Womanlike,
she would not go without her " things " ; and she took
so long collecting and packing her treasures her silk and
muslin dresses, her feather crowns, her fans and bits of
cherished European finery from far-away Auckland
that the suspicions of a prying girl were aroused. Out she
came, accompanied by two others all handmaidens to
Tinomana and charged the princess with an intention to
elope. Tinomana acknowledged the truth, and ordered
the girls to hold their tongues, offering them liberal rewards.
This was not enough, however ; the three girls demanded
that Tinomana, in addition to buying their siksnce, should
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 81
shield them from the possible wrath of the great Makea
by taking them with her. She was forced to consent ;
and so, when the impatient lover, lurking in the darkness
near the harbour, saw his lady coming at last, she came
with three attendants, and almost enough luggage to rival
Marie Antoinette's encumbered flight to Varennes.
Eventually, however, the party put off in a canoe, the
girls lying flat in the bottom, with Tinomana crouching
beside them and Salmon holding a lighted torch, which he
waved in the air as they went. For the boat had to pass
close by the Coronet, and Captain -Rose, somehow or other,
had become suspicious, and young Salmon knew he would
think nothing of stopping any boat that could not give an
account of itself. So Salmon took the torch, to look like
a fishing-boat going out with spears and torches to the
reef, and, paddling with one hand while he held the light
aloft with the other, he passed the Coronet safely, knowing
well that his face would be unrecognisable at a distance of
fifty yards or so in the wavering shadow of the flame.
Beyond the reef lay the Humboldt waiting. Tinomana
and her maids and her luggage were swung up the side with
small ceremony ; Salmon hurried after, and a small but
welcome breeze enabled the schooner to slip out to sea un-
noticed in the dark. She made for Mangaia, another of
the Cook Islands, some hundred and fifty miles away, and
reached it in a couple of days. But the Humboldt had
hardly made the land when the dreaded Coronet appeared
on the horizon, carrying every stitch of sail, and with her
decks, her " Jacob's-ladder," and her very yardarms
crowded by furious Raratongans. The fugitives were
caught !
At first they had not been missed. The islanders were
feasting and drinking, the Arikis were unsuspicious, and
the Coronet had seen only a fishing-canoe with a solitary
man on board gliding out to the reef. But with the morning
light came the knowledge that Tinomana was absent from
her palace, that Salmon had not come home, and that the
82 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Humboldt was gone. Raratonga was enraged, and all the
more so because pursuit appeared for the moment to be
impossible. They knew that the Humboldt had probably
made for Mangaia ; but the breeze x had died away, and
the Coronet, her sails flapping idly against her rakish
masts, lay helpless in harbour. Some brilliant spirit,
however, proposed that the schooner should be towed out,
in the hope of catching a breeze beyond the reef ; and
half a dozen great whaleboats, manned by powerful arms,
were harnessed to the Coronet's bows. Out she came
through the opening in the foaming coral reef, with scream-
ing and splashing and tugging at oars, into the blue,
open sea, and beyond the shelter of the peaky, purple
hills. The breeze was met at last, the boats cast off
and dropped astern, and the Coronet, carrying half Rara-
tonga on board, set sail for Mangaia.
Once within the range of the Humboldt the Coronet
lowered a boatful of armed men, and the latter made
for the schooner lying-to under the shelter of the Mangaian
hills. Captain Harris, of the Humboldt, however, ordered
his crew to shoot down the first man who attempted to
board, and the attacking boat thought better of it. Beaten
by force they tried diplomacy, in which they were more
successful. They told Captain Harris that all his cargo
of valuable cotton, lying on the wharf at Raratonga ready
for shipment, would be destroyed unless he gave the princess
back. This meant absolute ruin, and-the captain had to
submit. Salmon told Tinomana that it was best to give
in for the present, as they were caught ; but that the parting
would be only for a time. And back to Raratonga went
the disconsolate princess, bereft of her lover and her stolen
wedding, and with the anticipation of a good scolding to
come from the indignant Arikis.
For some months after this disaster Salmon wandered
about from island to island, living now in Raiatea, now
in Flint Island, now in Mauke always restless and always
impatient. At last he judged the time had come to make
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 83
a second attempt, and tried to obtain a passage to Rara-
tonga. Schooner after schooner refused to take him, but
finally a little vessel called the Atalanta braved the wrath
of the Arikis and brought him back. During his absence
time had worked in his favour, and the opposition to the
marriage was now much weaker. The Arikis received
him coolly and fined him twenty pounds' worth of needles,
thread, and tobacco for his late excursion, but they no
longer refused to let him see Tinomana. The missionary,
however, still objected to the marriage, and as he was the
only clergyman available for the ceremony it seemed as
if things, on the whole, were " getting no forrader."
At this juncture the great Makea stepped in, and with
the charming variability common to her sex, took the
part of the lovers against all Raratonga as strongly as she
had before opposed their union. She was not then in
Raratonga, but in another of the Cook Islands, Atiu.
From thence she sent the schooner Venus to Raratonga,
ordering the captain to fetch Tinomana and Salmon to
Atiu, where the local missionary would marry them, or
Makea would know the reason why.
Raratonga obstinate Raratonga ! still refused to give
its princess to a foreign adventurer, though it trembled
at the thought of defying the Elizabethan Makea. A band
of warriors came down to the harbour to see that Salmon
did not get on board the ship. As for Tinomana, they did
not dare to oppose her departure, when the head of the
house had actually summoned her. But the princess had
no notion whatever of going alone. Salmon was smuggled
on board in the dusk and hidden under a bunk. A pile
of mats and native " pareos," or kilts, was placed over him,
and there, in the heat of the tropic night, he lay and swel-
tered, while the Venus swung to her cable and the warriors
hunted the ship and found nothing. When they went
off, baffled, the schooner put to sea. A Raratongan vessel,
still suspicious, chased her to Atiu, but Makea informed
the pursuing crew that it would be bad for their health to
84 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
land on her property unasked ; and, as this great Pacific
Queen had, and has, the reputation of keeping her word
when it is passed, the Raratongans did not dare to set
foot on shore. This time it was they who went home
disconsolate.
And so the young couple were married " and lived happily
ever after." Tinomana and her consort now reside at
Arorangi, Raratonga, in their long, low house, set among
frangipani trees and oranges, and covered with flowering
tropical creepers, and seldom or never occupy their palace.
Tinomana's five children are dead ; she herself is growing
old, but the memory of those long-past years of adventure
and romance is still with her. Her life glides quietly and
dreamily by, within the sound of the humming ocean surf,
under the shadow of the purple Raratongan hills. She
has had her day, and there remain the quiet sunset and
the softened twilight, before the time of dark.
The queen had little to say to us, for she does not speak
English, nor is she shrewdly curious about men and things
outside of sleepy Raratonga, like her sister sovereign,
Makea. She smiled a good deal, and said some polite things
about my dress, which illustrated a new fashion, and
seemed to interest her more than anything else connected
with the call. I had brought a gift with me for Tino-
mana, a silk scarf of a peculiarly screaming blue, and I
presented it before I took my leave with some politenesses
that the royal consort rapidly translated for me. The
queen was much pleased with the gift, and began trying
its effect on several different hats at once. Then we had
some more cocoanut water and said good-bye, and drove
home again in the yellow sunset.
The crabs were getting noisy as we passed along a soft
bit of sandy road close by the shore. They are fairly
active all day, and at night seem to wake up a little more
completely than before. One can hear them rattling
and scratching loudly all over the stones and rubbish
about the shore ; the ground is riddled with their holes
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 85
as we pass, they dart in at their front doors as swiftly as
spiders, and stand looking cautiously round a corner till
the threatening apparition is gone. They are not nice
things, these crabs they are tall and spindly and insect-
like in build, with a scrawny body set on eight spider-like
legs, and ugly, sharp, thin claws. They live on the land,
but haunt the beach a good deal, because of the debris
to be found there, and they are such nasty feeders that
not even the natives will eat them, which is saying a good
deal.
They have an uncanny fancy for coming into houses.
If your residence is not raised up on a good Verandah,
which they cannot surmount, you may be alarmed some
night by a ghostly tapping and ticking on the floor, like
nothing you have ever heard or dreamed of before, and
while you are wondering fearfully what the sound may be,
you will suddenly become aware of something clumsy and
noisy scrambling among the mosquito curtains of your
bed. At this, if you are of common human mould, you
will arise hastily, tangling yourself up in the curtains as
you do so, and call loudly for a light. And when one is
brought, behold the offender scuttling hastily away on
eight long thin legs into the outer dark, without stopping
to make an explanation or an apology. You are so annoyed
that you put on a dressing-gown and follow him out on the
verandah, a stick in your hand and murder in your heart ;
but just as you reach the steps, there is a loud " flump " on
the floor, and a centipede as big as a sausage, with a
writhing black body and horrible red legs and antennae,
flashes past the edge of your sweeping draperies. At this
you give it up, and get back to your mosquito curtains.
You are just falling asleep, when Good Heavens !
what is it ?
Surely nothing but a burglar could have made that
fearful noise in the outer kitchen ! a burglar, or a mad-
man, or both in one. It sounds as if some one were beating
somebody else with an iron bucket. Perhaps it may be
86 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
only a native dog chasing a cat. Up go the curtains once
more, letting half the mosquitoes in the island in, and off
the wretched traveller sets for the kitchen, accompanied
by a brave but pallid hostess, who says she is extremely
sorry her husband would choose this week for going away
from home.
There he is ! there is the author of the noise a black,
bristly, incredibly hideous hermit crab as big as a biscuit
out of his shell, and fighting like grim death in an empty
kerosene tin, with another crab nearly as big, and quite as
vicious. Number one has got too big for the second-
hand univalve shell he lived in, and is touring the country
trying to replace it. Number two, also out-growing his
clothes, has got half a broken sardine box in the kerosene
tin (which acts as ash-bucket to the house), and he thinks
it is the loveliest new shell he has ever seen. So, unluckily,
does the other crab, and they are in the act of putting it
to ordeal by combat, when we invade the scene of the
battle, and rudely shake the crabs and the shells and the
sardine tin all off the end of the verandah together.
" What on earth brings crabs into people's houses ? "
you ask amazedly, as you go back to bed again. It seems an
insane action for any sensible crab, considering that we
are half a mile from the sea.
" Pure cussedness," says my friend wrathfully. " They
even climb up the verandah posts, and sit among the
flowers. "What for ? Spite, I think ; there isn't anything
more ill-natured in the world than a hermit crab."
If it is not a moonlight night, now, we get to sleep at
last, but if it is, and the oranges are ripe
Well, that is the time the " mor kiri-kiris " choose to
perform their orisons ; and when they are playing the
devil with the holy peace and calm of midnight on the
roof, not even a fourth mate newly come off his watch,
could sleep below.
" Here, you blank, blank, blank, unspeakable, etcetera,
let go that orange ! "
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 87
" I shan't, blank your double-blank limbs and wings !
I got it first ! "
" Then just look out, you mangy, fox-faced, clumsy-
winged beast, for I'll rip the inside out of your rotten
carcase with my claws."
" Like to see you ! " (somewhat muffled with stolen
orange).
" You will ! "
Shriek, shriek, yell, howl, scream.
" You've bitten my toe off, you trebly-blanked vermin ! "
" Meant to ! "
" Clear off ! "
" Won't ! "
" Come on again, then ! "
" Pax ! pax ! here's the great pig with fur on its head
that lives in the house, coming out with a gun. I'm off."
" So am I, but we'll go back again the moment it goes in."
That is the way one sleeps in the orange season, in a
place that happens to be popular with the " mor kiri-kiri,"
or flying-fox a bat with a furry body as big as a cat's, long
sharp white teeth, a head exactly like a fox, and the crustiest
disposition of anything living on the island.
CHAPTER V
Feasting and Fun on Steamer Day The Brown People of Rara-
tonga Who sent back the Teeth ? Divorce made easy
Climbing a Tropical Mountain A Hot-water Swim Out
on the Rainbow Coral Reef Necklaces for No One.
OTEAMER day in Raratonga, as in all the islands
O that rejoice in the privilege of a regular steamer
service, is beyond comparison the event of the month.
Almost before dawn on the day which is expected to see
the boat arrive, the traders are up and about, seeing to
the carting of their fruit and copra, and making ready
the shelves of the stores for the new goods coming in from
Auckland. All the residents, men and women, white
and brown, are getting out the cleanest of muslins and drill
suits, and looking up the shoe-whitening box, which per-
haps has not been much in demand since the steamer
called on her way back from Tahiti last month. The
daughters of the white community are making tinned-
peach pies, and dressing fowls, in case of callers these are
the inevitable " company " dishes of the Pacific and the
native women are bringing out their newly made straw
hats, and, ironing their gayest of pink or yellow or scarlet
cotton, squatting cross-legged on the floor as they work.
Cocoanuts for drinking are being husked by the men of
the village, and laid in neat piles under the verandahs, out
of the sun ; and in most of the little birdcage houses,
the children are impounded to grate cocoanut meat for
cream ; while the dying yells of pigs make day hideous
from the groves beyond the town.
When the tiny trail of smoke, for which every one is
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 89
looking, first rises out of the empty sea, it may be on the
day expected, or it may be later there is little time in the
Great South Seas the whole island is agape with excite-
ment. The natives shriek with delight, and make haste to
gather flowers for wreaths and necklaces ; the clean suits
and frocks are put on by brown and white alike, and the
populace begins to hover about the wharf like a swarm of
excited butterflies. The great whale-boats are ready to
rush out at racing speed to the steamer, long before she
comes to a stop in the bay she dares not come into the
harbour, which is only fit for small craft passengers from
Auckland come ashore, anxious to see the island curiosities,
and find to their embarrassment that they are unmistakably
regarded in that light themselves ; and, as soon as may
be, the mail comes after them. Upon which events, the
whole population makes for the Government buildings,
and flings itself in one seething breaker against the door
of the Post Office, demanding its mails. While the letters
are being sorted by a handful of officials locked and barred
out of reach within, it rattles at the doors and windows,
and as soon as the bolts are withdrawn, the mighty host,
breathless and ruthless, bursts in like a besieging army.
But when all are in, nobody has patience to wait and open
papers, in order to know what has been going on in the
outer world all these weeks. Purser, passengers, and even
sailors are seized upon, and compelled to stand and deliver
news about " the war," and other burning questions,
before any one thinks of opening the envelopes and wrappers
in their hands.
Minds being satisfied, bodies now assert their claim.
Steamer day is feast day beef day, ice day, day for
enjoying all the eatables that cannot be had in the island
itself. There is mutton in Raratonga, but not much at
the best of times, and of beef there is none at all. So all
the white folk order beef to come up monthly in the ship's
cold storage, and for two happy days the meat will
keep no longer they enjoy a feast that might perhaps
90 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
more fairly be called a " feed." About noon on steamer
day, a savoury smell, to which the island has long been
a stranger, begins to diffuse itself throughout Avarua.
Every one, with true island hospitality, is asking every one
else to lunch and dinner, to-day and to-morrow, so that
Mrs. A. and her family may have a taste of Mr. B.'s sirloin,
and Mr. B. get a bit of the C. 's consignment of steak, and
the A.'s and B.'s and E.'s enjoy a little bit of Colonel Z.'s
roast ribs. A sensuous, almost unctuous, happiness shines
like a halo about every face, and after dusk white dinner
coats flit up and down the perfumed avenues, thick as
night-moths among the orange bloom overhead. To-
morrow there will be great doings in the pretty bungalow
on the top of the hill, for the Resident Commissioner has
got a big lump of ice as a present from the captain of the
steamer, and is hoarding it up in blankets to give a dinner-
party in its honour. The white man who could consume a
lump of ice all by himself, in the island world, would be
considered capable of any crime, and the hospitable
Commissioner is the last person to shirk his obligations
in such a matter.
Once the steamer has come and gone, a dreamy peace
settles down upon the island. There is seldom much
certainty as to clock time, since every one goes by his
own time-piece, and all vary largely, nor does any one
heed the day of the month overmuch. This pleasant
disregard of time is the true secret of the fascination
of island life or perhaps one of the secrets, since no one
has ever really succeeded in denning the unspeakable
charm of these lotus lands. Imagine a civilised com-
munity, where people dine out in evening dress, leave
cards and have " At Home " days, yet where there is no
post except the monthly ship mail, there are no telegrams,
trains, trams, times, appointments, or engagements of
any kind ! Picture the peace that comes of knowing
certainly that, for all the time of the steamer's absence
there can be no disturbance of the even current of life ;
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 91
no great events at home or abroad, no haste, or worry, or
responsibility ! People keep young long in Raratonga ;
faces are free from weariness and strain ; the white man
with the " burden " laughs as merrily and as often as the
brown man who carries nought but his flowery necklace
and his pareo. Nobody is rich rich men do not come
down to the islands to run small plantations, or trading
stores, or to take up little appointments under a little
Government but every one has enough, and extrava-
gance is impossible, since luxuries are unpurchasable on
the island. There are so social distinctions, save that
between white and brown all the seventy or eighty
white residents knowing one another on a footing of common
equality, although in England or even New Zealand, they
would certainly be split up into half a score of mutually
contemptuous sets.
As for the natives the jolly, laughing, brown-skinned,
handsome men and women of the island their life is
one long day of peace and leisure and plenty. The lands
of the six thousand who once inhabited Raratonga are
now for the most part in the hands of the nineteen hundred
survivors, and every native has therefore a good deal
more than he wants. Breadfruit, bananas of many kinds,
oranges, mammee-apples, and countless other fruits,
grow altogether, or almost, without cultivation ; taro,
yam, and sweet potatoes need little, and cocoanuts are
always to be had. A native house can be put up in a
day or two, furniture is superfluous, and clothes consist of
a few yards of cotton print. The Raratongan, therefore,
owes no tale of labour to Nature or Society for his existence
in quiet comfort, if he does not choose to work. But in
many cases he does choose, for he wants a buggy and a
horse,, and a bicycle or two, and a sewing machine for his
wife ; shoes with squeaking soles for festive wear
deliberately made up with " squeakers " for island trade,
these bottles of coarse strong scent, tins of meat and
salmon as an occasional treat, and, if he is ambitious, one
92 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
of those concrete, iron-roofed houses of which I have
already spoken, to enhance his social position, and make
the neighbours envious, what time he continues to live
peaceably and comfortably in his palm hut outside not
being quite such a fool in this matter as he looks.
Sometimes the Raratongan will go so far as to get his
front teeth stopped with gold by a travelling dentist,
purely for style, since he is gifted by nature with grinders
that will smash any fruit stone, and incisors that will
actually tear the close tough husk off a huge cocoanut
without trouble. It is related of one of the wealthier
Raratongans that, being stricken in years and short of
teeth, he purchased a set of false ones from a visiting
dentist, and that the latter, when he next returned to
the island, was astonished to find the set thrown on his
hands as no good, on the grounds that they would not
husk cocoanuts !
In order to secure all these more or less desirable luxuries,
the Raratongan trades in fruit and copra. That is to
say, he cuts up and dries (strictly at his leisure, and when
he feels like it) a few thousand cocoanuts, or nails up some
hundreds of oranges, and scores of banana bunches, from
his overflowing acres, in wooden crates, to send down to
Auckland. This labour, repeated a few times, brings
him in good British gold by the handful. Copra, sold
to the traders in the town, fetches about seven pounds
a ton, and a family working for a few days can prepare as
much as that. Other produce is hardly less profitable,
to a cultivator who has more land than he wants, provides
his own labour, and need spend nothing on seeds or plants.
There is, at most, only light work, and that seldom, so
that the Raratongan can, and often does, spend the greater
part of his time singing in choruses on the verandahs of
the houses, dancing to the thrilling beat of a native
drum under the cocoanut trees, or fishing lazily off the
reef.
The Raratongans are all, to a man, good Christians
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 93
good Protestants of the Dissenting variety, good Catholics,
and, in a few cases, enthusiastic Seventh Day Adventists
being readily enough inclined to adhere to a cult that makes
it sinful to work on the seventh day of the week, and
impossible to work on the first. It is said that Mormon
missionaries have visited the group, but failed to make
converts. Without going into details that might disturb
the sensitive mind, one feels obliged to remark, in this
connection, that the failure was probably on all fours,
as to cause, with the ill-success of the merchant who
attempted to sell coals to Newcastle.
And still concerning this matter " one word more,
and I have done." Some weeks after my arrival, I was
going round the group in company with the Resident
Commissioner and a few more officials, who were holding
courts and administering justice in the various islands.
The Commissioner was late getting back to the ship one
afternoon, and the captain asked him if he had been
detained.
" Only a little while," replied the guardian angel of the
group, cheerfully rattling his pockets, which gave forth
a pleasant chinking sound. " Another dozen of divorces.
We'll have a new road round the island next year." And
he went to dinner.
Divorce in the Cook Islands is not an expensive luxury.
If memory serves me right, it costs under thirty shillings,
and there is a sixpence somewhere in the price I am unable
to say why. But I remember very well indeed, after the
officials had gone home, when I was travelling round
about other islands with a captain, who had just taken
over the ship and did not know the Cook group, that
dignitary came to me one day and said :
" I can't make out these hands of mine. They're
a very decent lot for niggers, and don't give no trouble,
but one and another, now that we're going round the
islands, keeps coming to me and asking me for an advance
on their wages, because, says they, they've been a long
94 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
time from home, and they wants it and every blessed
one of them he wants the same advance ! "
" Was it so-and-so ? " I asked, mentioning a certain
small sum with a sixpence in it.
" How on earth did you know ? " was the reply.
" Price of a divorce from the Commissioner," I ex-
plained.
" Well ! " said the captain, who was a hard-shelled old
whaler, with a strong religious cast. And again " Well ! "
" That's what I think myself," I explained. " But it
certainly fills the exchequer. I hear the score runs up to
ten or twelve apiece, often enough."
" Disgustin'," said the captain, spitting over the rail.
" Certainly," I agreed.
But the incident has its own significance, so - 1 have
recorded it.
I linger long over the life and ways of Raratonga, for
I spent many very happy weeks there studying native
customs, and taking notes ? Well, perhaps a little, at
all events. Raratonga is not quite so lazy a place as
Tahiti, and the climate is less trying. Still still
How impossible it is to explain to the reader who has
never spent a hot season in the tropics ! I think I shall
not try. There were missed opportunities there were
things I ought to have studied, and did not, and things I
should have seen, and didn't see. It is of no use to say
why. Those who have passed between the magic line of
Cancer and Capricorn will not need to 'be told, and the
others could not understand.
I did something to satisfy my conscience, however,
when I climbed the highest mountain in Raratonga
a peak something over three thousand feet high, so the
residents said. It was reported that the Admiralty survey
did not agree by a hundred feet or so, with the local
estimate. I know myself that both were wrong ; that
peak is ten thousand, or perhaps a little more. Did it
not take myself and two or three others from seven a.m.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 95
until nine p.m., to get up and down, working as hard as
white ants (there is nothing in the islands really busy
except the ants) all the time ?
We went the wrong way several wrong ways we
lost our food and our water, and got so thirsty that we
licked the leaves of the trees, and so hungry that it was
agony to know ourselves above the zone of the orange
and banana all day, and see the food we could not reach
till night hanging in clusters far below. We did most
of our climbing by the heroic method of swarming up
perpendicular rock faces on the ladders of the creepers,
and a good deal of it by scrambling along in the tops of
small trees, like monkeys. When we got to the top there
was just room for the whole party to stand and cheer, and
we cheered ourselves vigorously. People do not climb
mountains much in the islands of the Pacific, and the
peak we were on had been trodden by only one or two
white men, and no white women.
" There used to be natives up here often enough, some
years ago, shooting wild fowl," said one of our guides,
letting the smoke of his pipe curl out over " half a duchy,"
lying blue and green, and far, far down, under his elbow.
" But they stopped coming. Several of 'em got killed,
and the others didn't think it good enough."
" How did they get killed ? " I ask, listening to the
wild cocks crowing in the sea of green down below, like a
farm-yard gone astray.
" Oh, climbing ! "
When we had finished admiring the view of the island,
we started down again. And now, what with our hunger,
and our fatigue, and the wild adventures in impossible
places we had had coming up, we all became rather tired,
and more than rather reckless. Over and over again,
slithering down steep descents, we let ourselves go, and
tobogganed, sitting, we did not care where. The lianas
crashed, the red-flowered rata snapped and fell on us, the
lace-like tree ferns got in our way with their damp black
96 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
trunks, and banged us as we tumbled past. Every one
knew that if we did not get off the precipice slopes before
dark, we should have to halt wherever we might be, and
wait till morning, holding tight to the trunk of a tree to
keep from falling down into depths unknown. But no
one said anything about it.
And in the end, we got back safe sore and tired and
hungry ; not thirsty, however, for we had found a stream
in the interminable dark of the valley, and had all put our
heads into it like brutes, the moment our feet felt the
welcome hollow and splashed into the water. The ladies
of the party had not a whole gown among them, and not
very much else, so shrewdly had the thorns and creepers
of the close-knitted forest squeezed and torn us. Still,
we had got up where no white women had been before,
and we were all very proud, though we had to slink home-
ward in the dark, avoiding the lights of the houses, and
each slip in unobserved at the back doors of our respective
homes. But we had done the climb, and - " That
was something," as Hans Andersen would have said.
Picnics we had in plenty, while I stayed. Sometimes
they were bathing picnics, when the ladies of half a dozen
houses went off to spend the day down on the shore, and
swim in the lagoon. The water, not more than five feet
deep in any place, was the colour of green grass when
the sun shines through, and it was as warm as an ordinary
hot bath. One could spend hour after hour amusing
oneself with swimming tricks, coming out now and then to
roast for a little on the hot, snow-white coral sand, where
bits and branches of coral pretty enough for a museum
lay scattered everywhere, and exquisite flowering creepers
spread their long green tails of leafage often thirty or
forty feet in length, and all starred with pink or yellow
blossoms right across the broad expanse of the beach.
Coming out finally, it was customary to find a big rock, and
stand with one's back against it till the wet bathing dress
was half dried with the blistering heat of the stone. This
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 97
was supposed to prevent chills. I think myself that one
would have to hunt a chill very hard indeed in the hot
season in Raratonga, before catching it. It is not a place
where one hears of " chill " troubles, and there is no fever
of any kind. When you find a draught there, you tell
every one else in the house about it, and they come and
sit in it with you. When you give tea, to callers, it is
correct to serve cold water on the tray to temper the
beverage, and put a spoon instead of a butter knife, in
the butter dish.
Nor does it cool down overmuch at night, in the hot
months, though in the " cold " ones, you may want a
blanket now and then. The temperature being so equable
all round, chills are, naturally, not to be looked for and
feared at every turn, as in the great tropic continents,
where there is no surrounding sea to prevent rapid radia-
ation of heat, and sudden changes of temperature are
frequent and deadly. On the whole, there is much to be
said in favour of the climate of the Southern Pacific, and
little against it. It enjoys a long cool season of at least
six months, when the heat is not at all oppressive. Three
months of the year are very hot and damp, and three
neither hot nor cool. At worst, the thermometer seldom
goes above ninety in the shade. White children can
be brought up in the islands without injury to health,
and many of the older residents have spent the best
part of a long life in the South Seas, and attained to
a venerable age, without ever suffering from illness. The
Government doctor in Raratonga leads an easy life
on the whole, and in the other islands of the Cook
Group the entire absence of medical advice seems to
trouble no one.
A reefing picnic was among the many pleasant enter-
tainments to which I was invited during my stay. " Reef-
ing " is such a favourite entertainment in the islands that
nearly every white woman has a reefing skirt and shoes in
her wardrobe the former short, like a hockey skirt, the
98 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
latter stout and old. Buggies are gathered together in
the town, and the picnickers drive to a suitable spot some
distance away, where the horses are taken out and tethered,
and the " reefers " secure a canoe to bring them to their
destination the coral barrier reef, lying between the
lagoon and the sea.
Paddled by some of the native guests (for there are
generally a few Raratongans included in the party) the
canoes glide easily over the shallow water towards the
reef, nights of the exquisite little sapphire-coloured fish that
haunt the coral rocks, scattering beneath the keel like
startled butterflies. Now the water is of the most vivid
and burning emerald, shooting green lightnings to the
sun, now, as we near the reef, it begins to change in colour,
and
Oh !
Why, the canoe is floating on a liquid rainbow on
a casket of jewels melted down and poured into the burning
sea on glancing shades of rose, and quivering gleams of
violet, and gold and blue and amethyst and chrysophrase,
all trembling and melting one into another in marvels of
colouring that leave all language far behind. Under the
keel, as we shoot forward, rise and sink wonderful water-
bouquets of purple, pink, and pearl ; great lacy fans of
ivory ; frilled and fluted fairy shells, streamers of brilliant
weed, and under and through all these wonders glint, from
far below, the dark blue depths of unplumbed caverns
beneath. It is the coral reef, and we are going to land
upon a spot exposed by the tide, and see what we can see
of these wonders, by-and-by. If we were bent on fishing,
we might spend a pleasant hour or two catching some of
these peacock and parrot-coloured fish that flutter through
these wonderful water-gardens. But reefing proper is
more amusing, after all.
At a point where the coral juts out above the sea, we
leave the canoe, and start to walk about. It is very like
trying to walk on a gigantic petrified hair-brush. The
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 99
coral is peaked and pointed, and wrought into honey-
combed sponges of stone, and there is nowhere for the
foot to rest in security. Besides, the reef is covered with
sea urchins possessing spines as long and sharp as a big
slate-pencil, and these things pierce through any but the
stoutest shoes. The colours of the sea-urchins are fascin-
ating, and we pick up a good many, in spite of difficulties.
Then there are tiger shells, shiny and spotted, in hues of
orange and brown, and beautiful scarlet and pinky and
lilac and chequered shells, and the daintiest of goffered
clam shells, pearl white within, ivory white without, as
large as a pea-pod, or as large as a vegetable dish you
may take your choice. And, if you are lucky, there is a
varnished brown snail shell that you would not think
worth picking up, if you did not happen to know that
it has a " peacock-eye " gem, good to set in brooches,
inside its plain little front door like the homely brown
toad of fable, that carried a jewel in its head. Much other
spoil there is to put in your basket, and many things
that you have no desire to possess at all among them the
huge hanks of slimy black string, which are alive, and
wrigglesome, and not at all pleasant to put your hand
on and the wicked-faced great eels that look suddenly
out of holes, and vanish, bubbling ; and the revolting,
leprous-spotted fish with the spiny back, that one may
chance to see lurking at the bottom of a pool, every spine
charged full of deadly poison for whoever touches it with
unwary foot or hand. Indeed, the friends who are with
you will warn you not to put your fingers into any pool,
but to hook out shells and other spoil with a stick, if you
want to be really careful, for there are as many stinging
and biting things among the beauties of the coral reef,
as there thorns in a bed of roses.
I have secured a good many shells, and a Reckitt's blue
star-fish as big as a dinner-plate, and one or two other
curiosities, and now I want, above everything else, one
of those miraculous coral bouquets that bloom so
ioo IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
temptingly just beneath the surface at this point. One of
my friends asks me which I will have with a smile, that,
somehow or other, seems to amuse the rest. I select a
pinky-violet one, and with some dragging and pounding,
it is detached, and held up in the sun.
" Oh ! " I exclaim disappointedly, and every one
laughs. The beautiful bunch of coral flowers is a dirty
liver-colour, and the magical hues are gone.
" It's the water that gives the colours," explains the
coral-gatherer. " Every one is awfully disappointed
about it."
" Are there no colours at all, then ? "
" Oh yes, a little shade of pinkiness, and a touch of
green, and that purply-brown. But you should see the
corals when they are cleaned and dried. You'd better
have these, you won't know them when they are bleached ;
they're like spider's webs and lace furbelow things, all
in white."
" Is there none of the real red stuff ? " I ask somewhat
ruefully, balancing myself with difficulty upon a sort of
ornamental sponge-basket of spiky coral.
" Not here. All these volcanic islands have a ring of
coral reef right round, but the coral is always the white
kind. There's a very little red coral in Samoa, and about
Penrhyn, I believe. But, speaking generally, it's all
white in the Pacific."
I think of the dreams of my childhood, and the delightful
pictures of palmy islands circled round with a chevaux-de-
frise of high spiky red coral, which used to flit before my
fancy on holiday afternoons. It is true that the cold
practicalities of the Voyage of the Challenger, which some-
body gave me in my " flapper " days, once and for all,
to my bitter disappointment, knocked the bottom out of
those cherished schemes of going away to live on some-
thing like a glorified coral necklace, some day. But I
wonder, as I get into the canoe again, and glide shorewards
and teawards, paddled by the swift brown arms of native
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 101
girls, how many grown-up people still hold to that
delightful fancy, not knowing that it is as impossible
to realise as a dream of rambling in the moon ?
Tea is preparing on the shore when we get back, very
wet and dirty, but very well pleased. The native girls
among the guests immediately offer us spare dresses.
It is the mode among Raratongans to take two or three
dresses to a picnic, and retire every now and then into
the bush to change one smart muslin or cotton " Mother
Hubbard " for another just for pure style. So there
are plenty of clothes to spare, and in a minute or two
the damp, sea-weedy " reefers " are fitted out with flowing
garments of clean cambric and silk, of a mode certainly
better adapted to the climate than the fitted garments
of the " papalangi."
This question of dress is a burning one among island
ladies. The native loose robe, hung straight down from
a yoke, is very much cooler, and the doctors say,
healthier, than belted and corseted dresses such as Euro-
pean women wear. But there is nevertheless a strong
feeling against it, because it is supposed to mean a ten-
dency to "go native," and the distinguishing customs
of the race acquire, in the island world, a significance quite
out of proportion to their surface importance, because
of the greatness of the thing they represent. Therefore,
the white woman, unless she is suffering from bad health,
and needs every possible help to withstand the heat of
the climate, sticks to her blouses and corsets, as a rule,
and sometimes " says things " about people who do not.
For all that, and all that, the native woman is in the right,
and if the other would agree to adopt the pretty, womanly,
and essentially graceful robe of the native, no one would
be the loser, and half of island humanity would be greatly
the gainer.
Later, when the dusk is coming down, and the magic
moon of the islands is creeping, big and round and yellow-
gold, out of a purple sea, we drive home again through the
4t
102 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
scented gloom of the forest, the endless song of the reef
accompanying the voices of the native women, as they
chant strange island melodies of long ago, that no one in
these days, not even the singers themselves, can fully
translate or understand. The moon climbs quickly up
as we drive, and the road is as light as day, when our
wheels roll into the sleeping town.
CHAPTER VI
The Simple Life in the South Seas Servant Problems again
Foods and Fruits of the Country The Tree that digests
Home-made Vanilla The Invaluable Lime How to cook
a Turtle In an Island Bungalow The Little House on
the Coral Shore Humours of Island Life Burying a
Cycle A Network of Names Mr. Zebedee-Thunderstorm-
Tin-Roof The Night-dress that went to Church The
Extraordinary Wedding South Sea Musicians A Con-
ductor's Paradise Society Journalism in Song.
HOUSEKEEPING in the South Sea Islands demands
a section to itself. All who are uninterested in
such matters may, and doubtless will, begin to skip at this
point.
Nothing helps the white house-mistress more than
the simple standard of living set in most of the islands.
It is true that if you are the wife of an important official
in the Government House entourage of Fiji, or if you
live in civilised, Americanised Honolulu, you will have
to " do things " much as they are done at home. But,
with these two exceptions, life in that enormous section of
the globe known as the South Seas (much of it, by the way,
is north of the Line) is simple and unpretentious. In
describing the home life of the white settlers in Raratonga,
I describe what is, with small local variations, the life of
settlers in almost every group of the Pacific, certainly,
the life of all in the eight different groups I visited myself,
during the years I spent in the South Seas. All over
the island world, people dine in the middle of the day,
except when entertaining friends, keep few servants or
none, and dress and feed simply, because nothing else
is possible. The trade cottons in the stores form the
104 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
material of every lady's dresses, and as for the making,
common consent, not to speak of climatic conditions,
votes the simplest style the best. Where every stitch
of sewing in dress or blouse must be done by the person
who is to wear the garment, it is astonishing how soon one
grows to regard elaborate tuckings, flouncings, inlayings,
with hostility, and how satisfied the eye becomes with the
simpler and less " fatigued " lines of the garments fashioned
by women who cannot hire a dressmaker for love or money.
Evening dress is almost always of the " blouse " descrip-
tion, and in a climate which works universal mischief
with delicate white skins, no matter how they are pro-
tected, this is no matter for regret. Men buy their drill
suits ready-made from the trading stores at a few shillings
apiece, and, with a white dinner-jacket and black cum-
merbund, any one is ready for the gayest of evening
entertainments.
The great dress question being thus resolved into
the simple elements of a few cotton frocks for every day,
and a muslin or two for best, behold ! half the worry of
modern life is lifted at a blow. " One must look like
other people " the goad of the toiling townswoman
becomes in the islands, " One looks like other people
because one must," and the words are a lullaby of rest.
After dress, comes servants, in the list of small worries
that turn a woman's fair locks grey, and swell the takings
of the fashionable hairdressers. Well, it cannot be said
that there is no servant trouble in the islands. White
servants simply do not exist ; they are far too much in
demand in America and Australasia to desert either of
these domestic paradises for the hotter and lonelier islands.
Native girls cannot be had either, since they marry at
thirteen or thereabouts. Native boys and men are the
only resource. They come to work by the day, and
are fed in the house ; their wages are generally about
five shillings weekly, in the case of a boy, and ten shillings
for a man. So far as \hey go, they are satisfactory
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 105
enough ; they work hard, and are extremely honest, and
they are amiability and good-nature itself. But their
scope is decidedly limited. They can garden, under
direction ; they can sweep, fetch wood and water, clean
the cooking-stove, husk and open the cocoanuts, wash,
peel and boil the vegetables, scrub the verandah floor,
clean the knives, wash up dishes, and whiten the shoes.
That is about all. The mistress of the house and her
daughters, if she is lucky enough to have any, must do
all the serious cooking, make the beds, dust, tidy, and
lay the table for meals.
One cannot say, however, that health suffers from
the necessity of doing a certain amount of housework
every day. On the contrary, the white women of the
islands are strong and handsome, and do not seem to
suffer from the heat nearly so much as the semi-invalid
ladies who have come to be regarded as the type of white
womanhood in India, that paradise of excellent service
and servants.
Otherwise, the islands help out the housekeeper con-
siderably. She can grow as much excellent coffee as the
family are likely to want, on a few bushes in the back
yard, and peppers only have to be pulled off the nearest
wild chili tree. Taro, yam, sweet potato, can be bought
from the natives for a trifle, or grown with very little
trouble. There will probably be enough breadfruit,
mango, orange, lime, and mammee-apple in the grounds
of the house, to supply all the family needs, and if any
one likes chestnuts, they can be picked up under the
huge maupei trees along any road. The mammee-apple
or paw-paw, mentioned above, is one of the most char-
acteristic fruits of the islands. In Raratonga, it grows
with extraordinary fertility, springing up of itself wherever
scrub is cleared away, and coming to maturity in a few
months. It is a slender palm-like tree, from ten to
thirty feet high, with a quaintly scaled trunk, very like
the skin of some great serpent, and a crown of pointed>
106 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
pinnated leaves, raying out fanwise from the cluster of
heavy green and yellow fruit that hangs in the centre.
The fruit itself is rather like a small melon, though wider
at one end than the other. It looks likes a melon, too,
when cut open, and is both refreshing and satisfying, with
a sweetish, musky flavour, The small, soft black seeds
in the centre are a sovereign cure for dyspepsia, as is
also the fruit itself in a lesser degree. The whole of this
wonderful tree, indeed, seems to be possessed of digestive
powers, for the toughest fowl or piece of salt beef will
become tender in a few hours, if wrapped in its leaves.
When boiled in the green stage the fruit is undistinguish-
able from vegetable marrow, and if cooked ripe, with a
little lime juice, it can be made into a mock apple pie,
much appreciated by settlers in a land where the typical
British fruit cannot be grown.
Cooking bananas are much used, and grow wild on
the lands of the natives, who sell them for a trifle. Every
house has its own patch of eating bananas of many kinds,
and orange-trees are almost sure to be there as well.
There is always a huge bunch of bananas, and two or
three great palm-leaf baskets of oranges, on the verandah
of every house, and the inmates consume them both in
uncounted numbers all day. Pineapples are easily raised
in the little bit of garden, or they can be bought for a
penny a piece. A vanilla vine will probably spread its
beautiful thick leaves over the fence, and hang out, in
due season, a store of pods for flavouring use in the kitchens.
Arrowroot may be grown or bought a big basket sells
for sixpence, and it has no more to do with the arrowroot
of the grocer's shop at home, than a real seal mantle
worth three figures has to do with a two guinea " electric.' 1
Limes grow wild everywhere, and the island housewife
makes full use of them. They clean her floors, her tables,
her enamelled ware, stained table linen, or marked clothing ;
they wash her hair delightfully, and take the sunburn off
her face and hands ; they make the best of " long drinks,"
107
and the daintiest of cake flavouring, they are squeezed into
every fruit salad, and over every stew ; they take the
place of vinegar, if the island stores run low ; in truth,
they are used for almost every purpose of domestic cooking,
cleaning, or chemistry.
Cabbage of an excellent kind grows wild in a few
islands. Tomatoes, small but excellent in flavour, are
found on the borders of the seashore, in many. Nearly
all English vegetables are grown by the white settlers
with extremely little trouble. The egg-plant, known in
England as a greenhouse ornament, here thrives splendidly
in gardens, and instead of the little plum-like fruit of the
British plant, produces a great purple globe as big as a
fine marrow, which resembles fried eggs very closely, if
sliced and cooked in a pan. But in truth there is no
limit to the richness and generosity of the island soil.
Were it not for the troublesome item of butcher's meat,
housekeeping in the Pacific would be marvellously cheap
and easy. That, however, is the housekeeper's bugbear.
Outside of Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas,
and Honolulu, fresh beef is not be had at all, and fresh
mutton not often. In very many islands tinned meat
and fowls are the only resource ; and the lady of the
house must tax her ingenuity to the utmost to find ways
of disguising the inevitable " tin." Curry, stew, pie,
mince ; mince, pie, stew, curry so runs the monotonous
programme in most houses ; and disguise it as one may,
the trail of the tin is over it all.
It is a great day in the islands when turtle are caught.
They are not common in the groups frequented by white
people, since they prefer the lonely, barren atolls where
the soil is dry and infertile ; but now and then a " school "
is found, and a big catch made. Then there is rejoicing
in the land, and cooking in every house of an uncommonly
liberal and elaborate kind. The South Sea turtle are
enormous, often weighing as much as seven or eight hundred
pounds, and occasionally touching the thousand. Such a
io8 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
monster as this would easily feed a large household for a
week but alas, in tropical climates fresh meat, even when
scalded, will not keep more than three days ; so a good
deal is usually wasted. The famous turtle soup is made
from the flippers, which are full of gelatine ; and it may
safely be assumed that no London aldermen fed on dying
creatures carried half across the world has ever tasted
soup so good as that made from a fine healthy turtle just
out of the sea. The grass-green fat of the upper shell is
used to put in the soup, and to fry the thick steaks of turtle
beef, also to baste the big roast of turtle meat that is
generally a feature of a turtle dinner. The eggs (of which
there will probably be a large bucketful at least) are fried
in green fat, and eaten as they are, shell-less, crisp and
golden, tasting- rather like roast chestnut. The tripe is
cooked like ordinary tripe ; the liver is fried. An
excellent dinner, but surely an indigestible one ? By no
means. It is a curious property of this turtle meat that a
much larger quantity of it can be eaten than of any ordinary
butcher's meat, without any sense of repletion or after ill
effects. This is the great dainty of the South Sea islands,
and if to a turtle dinner be added bisque soup made from
mountain river crayfish, a real island fruit salad, with lime
juice and cocoanut cream, a freshly plucked pineapple,
a dish of mangoes, granadillas, and a cup of island-grown
coffee, not the Carlton or the Savoy could do better for a
travelling prince.
All South Sea Island " white " houses are more or less
alike, being built of coral concrete (occasionally of wood) and
fitted with imported windows and doors. The verandah
is the great feature of the building ; for there the family
will probably spend most of their time, reading, smoking,
receiving callers, or simply lounging in long chairs and
listening to the monotonous singing of the natives in the
thatched reed houses near at hand. Splendid climbing
plants wreathe the pillars and sloping roofs of these
verandahs stephanotis, Bougainvillea, and countless gay
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 109
tropical flowers whose ugly Latin names only an accom-
plished botanist could remember. Gardenias, gorgeous
white trumpet lilies, tall bushes of begonia ; pink, yellow
and scarlet hibiscus, crimson poinsettia, delicate eucharis
lilies, run riot about the grounds, and orange and lemon
flowers fill the air with an exquisite perfume.
Within, the high-pitched, deep, church-like roof rises
above a range of partition walls separating the different
rooms, but giving a common air supply to all, since the
dividing walls are not more than ten or twelve feet high.
There are no secrets in an island house ; what any one
says at one end can be heard at the other, and a light
burning late in anybody's bedroom keeps all the rest
awake. In the older houses the roof is of " rau " or plaited
pandanus thatch, of a soft brown tone, delightfully cool
and exceedingly picturesque. The rafters, in such a house,
will be almost black with age, and beautifully latticed and
patterned with finely plaited " sinnet " (cocoanut fibre).
More modern houses have corrugated iron roofs, generally
painted red. The water supply from these roofs is of
some importance, and they are less expense and trouble
than the thatch ; but the latter is incomparably the more
picturesque, and a good deal the cooler as well.
The floor is always covered with native matting (pandanus
leaf, split and plaited). This is of a pleasant tan colour
in tone, and very cool and clean. The furniture is generally
basket and bamboo, with a native " tappa " cloth (of
which I shall have more to say later on) on the table. There
are sure to be groups of old native weapons on the walls
lances and spears and clubs and arrows and a few
island fans, arranged in trophies, and garlanded with
chains of shells. On the steps of the verandah one usually
finds a fern or two, planted in big white clam-shells off
the reef, and there may be others in the drawing-room.
A piano is a great luxury ; the island climate is not kind
to pianos. Harmoniums are more common.
The bedrooms may have ordinary beds imported from
no IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Auckland, or they may have (what is quite as good) native
bedsteads made of ironwood, laced across with sinnet, and
covered with soft pandanus leaf mats, over which the
under sheet is laid. Unless it is the cool season there will
not be a blanket. Mosquito curtains, of course, protect
each bed. All windows and doors are wide open, day or
night, hot season or cool.
The South Sea housekeeper has a few insect plagues to
fight against, but not nearly so many as her sister in India
or Jamaica. The ants eat everything that is not hung or
covered up. Enormous hornets, in the cool season, lurk
about ceilings, bookcases and cupboards, sleepy, cross,
and ready to dart a fearful sting, if accidentally touched.
Cockroaches are destructive at all times. Fleas do not
trouble much, and flies are only annoying in a few islands.
Mosquitoes are troublesome in the hot season, but give
little annoyance at other times. Centipedes and scorpions
exist, but are not common. They do come into houses
occasionally, and (being very poisonous, though not deadly)
frighten the inmates quite as much as the inmates un-
doubtedly frighten them. It is the rarest possible thing,
however, to hear of a European being bitten.
Education is not an unsolvable problem in the islands,
since quite a large number of groups possess convent
schools, where even such extras as music, languages, and
fancy needlework can be taught.
On the whole, the difficulties of housekeeping are some-
what less than at home, and the cost certainly much
smaller. It is true that a good many tinned stuffs are
used, and tinned food is always dear ; but the cheapness
of everything that the soil produces makes up that differ-
ence, and the simple standard of living swings the balance
still further to the right side. I am of opinion myself
that white families would benefit both in comfort and
in pocket by adopting the native style of house, which is, as
already mentioned, a structure of small neat sticks or
poles set very closely and strongly, but not filled in. The
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS in
roof is always thatched. In such a house, the air circu-
lates freely without any draught, and there is a pleasant,
diffused light during the daytime. At night, when native
houses are more or less transparent, the privacy-loving
white can draw thin cotton curtains across his walls until
the lights are put out.
One such house, built for and used by white people, was
conspicuous for the simple beauty of the design. The in-
terior was very plainly furnished with a few bamboo tables
and chairs, and a light stretcher bed or two. Its curtains
were of printed muslin from the store, and its floor was
nothing but white coral sand brought from the beach. The
house stood sheltered by tall palms, and the sea was so near
that all day one could watch the soft sparkle of the creaming
surf through the half-transparent walls, and all night long
one slept to the matchless lullaby of the humming reef.
(Windows blurred with beating mud, grey London roaring
by in the rain ; haggard faces, and murky summer, and the
snake of custom clipping stranglingly about the free man's
throat O Island wanderer, back in the weary North, does your
sea-bird's heart fly swift from these to those, and -sicken for
the lands where you must go no more ?}
Raratonga is full of funny things, if one knows where
to look for them. One would not suppose that the tombs
of the natives were a likely spot. Yet I would defy the
most serious of graveyard moralisers to count over the
list of things that the Raratongan buries in the tombs of
his departed relatives, without feeling his seriousness
badly shaken. Little household ornaments belonging to
the deceased are pathetic, certainly ; so, in a lesser degree,
are the Sunday clothes that often accompany their wearer
on the long journey. But what is one to say of bicycles,
Japanned bedsteads, and even pianos ? All these things
have been buried by Raratongans in the big concreted
tombs that crop up sociably along the edges of the public
H2 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
road every here and there. The piano, I must add, was
dug up again, by order of an indignant missionary, who gave
the disconsolate mourners a good lecture on heathenistic
practices, and the necessity of drawing the line somewhere.
Native names are sometimes exceedingly funny to the
perverted white mind, although to the owners they may be
dignified, poetic, and even beautiful. One young coffee-
coloured lady of my acquaintance had been named (in Rara-
tongan) " Cup-of-Tea." Another was " Box-with-a-Hole-
in-It " another " Tin-of-Meat." I should suppose, from
my knowledge of their religious training, that each of these
ladies possessed a godly scripture name of her own, properly
bestowed on her at her proper baptism. But in the Cook
Islands, the name a native is christened by, and the name
he or she goes by, are almost always distinct, which is
certainly confusing. Worse confusion still is caused by
the odd habit of changing these commonly accepted names
on any great occasion that seems to need special commemo-
ration. The natives themselves never seem to become
puzzled over all these name-changes, but so much can
hardly be said of the whites. It is, at the least, perplexing
to employ a gardener called Zebedee by the missionaries,
Thunderstorm by his friends, and Tin Roof by his relatives
like the notable character in The Hunting of the Snark,
Whose intimate friends called him Candle-Ends,
And his enemies Toasted Cheese.
But it is even worse to be informed some day, when you'
go to look after Zebedee-Thunderstorm-Tin Roof down in
the village, and ask why he has not turned up to weed your
pineapples that his name isn't any of the three, but
" Barbed Wire," because he has just finished putting up
a fence of barbed wire round the grave of his boy who
died last year, and has resolved to call himself hence-
forth, " Barbed Wire," in memory of his son !
Native notions about European clothes often provide
a feast of fun fcr the whites, who set the copies in dress.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 113
When a lace-trimmed garment of mine, usually reserved
for private wear under the shades of night and the shelter
of a quilt and sheet, went to Sunday morning church as
a best dress in full daylight, on the person of the laundress
who had been entrusted with my clothes for the wash, the
funny side of the affair was so much the more conspicuous,
that the borrower never got the reproof she certainly ought
to have had. And when a certain flower toque, made of
poppies (a blossom unknown to the Pacific) first drove the
women of the island half-distracted with excitement, and
then led to thirty-six native ladies appearing simultan-
eously at a dance in Makea's grounds, wearing most
excellent copies of my Paris model, done in double scarlet
hibiscus from the bush, the natural outrage to my feelings
(which every woman who has ever owned a " model " will
understand) was quite swallowed up in the intense amuse-
ment that the incident caused to everybody on the grounds.
I was unfortunate enough to be away on the island
schooner when a great wedding took place the nuptials
of one of the queen's nieces and so missed the finest
display of native dress and custom that had occurred
during the whole year. The bride, I heard, wore fourteen
silk dresses not all at once, but one after the other,
changing her dress again and again during the reception
that followed the wedding ceremony in the mission church,
until she almost made the white spectators giddy.
The presents were " numerous and costly " from the
guests to the bride, and from the bride to the guests, for it
is Raratongan custom to give presents to the people who
come to your wedding ; a fashion that would considerably
alleviate the lot of the weary wedding guest, if only it
could be introduced over here. The gifts for the bride
were carried in by the givers, and flung down in a heap
one by one, each being duly announced by the person
making the present, who showed no false modesty in
describing his contribution. " Here's twenty yards of
the most beautiful print for Mata (the bride), from Erri
H4 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Puno ! " " Here's three baskets of arrowroot, the best
you ever saw, for Mata, from Taoua." " Here's eighteen-
pence for Mata and Tamueli, from Ruru," flinging the
coins loudly into a china plate. So the procession went
on, until the gifts were all bestowed, the bride meanwhile
standing behind a kind of counter, and rapidly handing
out rolls of stuff, tins of food, ribbons, gimcracks of various
kinds, to her guests as they passed by. When all is added
up, the amusement seems to be about all that any one
really clears out of the whole proceeding.
The Cook Islanders are among the most musical of
Pacific races. They have no musical instruments, unless
" trade " mouth-organs, accordions, and Jew's harps may
be classed as such, but they need none, in their choral
singing, which is indescribably grand and impressive.
Here as elsewhere in the islands, one traces distinctly the
influence of the two dominant sounds of the island world
the low droning of the reef, and the high soft murmur
of the trade wind in the palms. The boom of the breakers
finds a marvellously close echo in the splendid volume
of the men's voices, which are bass for the most part, and
very much more powerful and sonorous than anything
one hears in the country of the " superior " race. The
women's voices are somewhat shrill, but they sound well
enough as one usually hears them, wandering wildly in
and out of the massive harmonies of the basses.
A Philharmonic conductor from the isles of the North
would surely think himself in heaven, if suddenly trans-
ported to these southern isles of melody and song. The
Pacific native is born with harmony in his throat, and
time in his very pulses. It is as natural to him to sing as
to breathe ; and he simply cannot go out of time if he
tries. Solo singing does not attract him at all ; music
is above all things a social function, in his opinion, and if
he can get a few others or better still, a few score others
to sit down with him on the ground, and begin a chorus,
he is happy for hours, and so are they*
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 115
To the Pacific traveller, this endless chanting is as much
a part of the island atmosphere as the palms and the reef
and the snowy coral strand themselves. One comes, in
time, to notice it hardly more than the choral song of
beating breaker and long trade wind, to which it is so
wonderfully akin. But at the first, wonder is continually
awakened by the incomparable volume of the voices, and
the curious booming sound like the echo that follows
the striking of some gigantic bell which characterises
the bass register of island men's singing. The swing and
entrain of the whole performance are intoxicating the
chorus, be it ten or a thousand voices, sweeps onward as
resistlessly as a cataract, and the beat of the measure
is like the pulse of Father Time himself. There are several
parts as a rule, but they wander in and out of one another at
will, and every now and then a single voice will break away,
and embroider a little improvisation upon the melody that
is like a sudden scatter of spray from the crest of a rolling
breaker. Then the chorus takes it up and answers it,
and the whole mass of the voices hurls itself upon the tune
like the breaker falling and bursting upon the shore.
It is very wonderful, and very lovely ; yet there are
times at one in the morning, let us say, when the moon
has crept round from one side of the mosquito curtain to
the other since one lay down, and the bats have finished
quarrelling and gone home, and the comparative chill of
the small hours is frosting the great green flags of the
bananas outside the window with glimmering dew when
the white traveller, musical or unmusical, may turn over
on an uneasy couch, and curse the native love of melody,
wondering the while if the people in the little brown
houses down the road ever sleep at all ?
What are the subjects of the songs ? That is more than
the natives themselves can tell you, very often, and certainly
much more than a wandering traveller, here to-day, and
gone next month, could say. Many of the chants are tra-
u6 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
ditional, so old that the customs they refer to are not half
remembered, and full of words that have passed out of
use. A good number now-a-days are religious, consisting
of hymns and psalms taught by the missionaries, and im-
proved on, as to harmony and setting, by the native.
The island love of choral singing must be an immense
assistance to the church services, since it turns these latter
into a treat, instead of a mere duty, and the native can
never get enough church, so long as there is plenty of
singing for him to do. Some of the secular songs are
understood to refer to the deeds of ancestors ; some are
amatory ; some and those the most easily understood
by white people who know the native languages are in
the nature of a kind of society journal, recording the im-
portant events of the last few days, and making comments,
often of a very free nature, on friends and enemies, and
the white people of the island. Most of these latter are
not good enough scholars to understand the chants, even
if they can talk a little native, which is just as well, when
oratorios of this kind are to be heard every evening among
the " rau " roofed huts :
" Big-Nose who lives in the white house has got a new
suit of clothes."
Chorus. " A new suit of clothes, a new suit, suit, suit of
clothes ! "
" Big-Nose cannot fasten the coat, he is so fat, ai ! ai,
fat like a pig fit for killing ! "
Chorus. " Ai, Ai ! a pig for killing, like a pig for killing,
Big-Nose is like a pig fit for killing ! "
" Big-Nose had a quarrel with his wife to-day, a quarrel,
a great quarrel, Big-Nose drank wisiki, much wisiki."
(All together, excitedly.) " A quarrel, a great quarrel,
much wisiki Big-Nose drank, Big-Nose ! "
" The wife of Big-Nose of the white house has long hair,
though she is very old, long hair that came to her in
a box by the sitima (steamer) ! "
Chorus. " Long hair, long hair, long hair, in a box on the
steamer. A box on the steamer, on the steamer,
long hair for the wife of Big-Nose who lives in the
white house."
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 117
A resident who really understood the natives and their
music once or twice translated choruses for me that were
quite as personal as the above. I have never since then
wondered, as I used to wonder, where on earth the merry
peasants of opera, with their extraordinary knowledge of
the principals' affairs, and their tireless energy in singing
about them, were originally sketched.
(Scholars will probably trace a resemblance to the Greek
chorus here. I leave it to them to work out the where-
fore, which makes me giddy even to think of, considering
the geographical elements involved in the problem.) *
But now enough of Raratonga, for the schooner Duchess
is waiting to carry me away to the other islands of the
group, and, after many thousands of miles travelled by
steamer upon " all the seas of all the world," I am at
last to learn what going to sea realty is.
CHAPTER VII
The Schooner at last White Wings versus Black Funnels Not
according to Clark Russell The Marvellous White Woman
The Song of the Surf Why not ? Delightful Aitutaki
Into an Atoll A Night in the House of a Chieftainess
The Scarlet Devil Nothing to wear How to tickle a
Shark The Fairy Islets A Chance for Robinson Crusoe.
THE schooner Duchess was in at last.
We were almost growing anxious about her in
Raratonga almost, not quite ; for after all, she was only
a fortnight overdue, and that is not much for an island
schooner, even when she is run by white officers. When
the easy-going native runs her, no one ever knows when
she will leave any port, and no one would venture to
predict that she will ever arrive at all. There are gener-
ally a good many native-owned schooners about the South-
Eastern Pacific, but, though all the numbers keep up, the
identity varies, and if you return after a few years and
ask for the ships you used to know, the answer will be,
Of their bones are coral made.
I have not space to tell you here of the native schooner
that started from one of the Cook Islands, not so very
long ago, to visit another island less than two hundred
miles away, but, because of the wild and weird navigation
of her owners, went instead to somewhere over a thousand
miles off ; toured half the Pacific ; stayed away six
months ; and finally came back to her own little island by
a happy chance, without ever having reached the place
she set out for after all. But it has a good deal of local
colour in it.
The Duchess, however, was not a native schooner, being
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 119
owned by whites, and run by a British captain, mate, and
boatswain, assisted by eight island seamen. There was,
therefore, a reasonable prospect of getting somewhere,
sometime, if I travelled in her ; so I took my passage,
and, for the first time, literally " sailed away " to see the
outer islands of the Cook Group, and later on, solitary
Savage Island, Penrhyn, Maiden, Rakahanga, and
Manahiki.
For more than four months afterwards, with a single
break, the little Duchess of 175 tons was my home. Little
she seemed at first, but before long she assumed the pro-
portions of quite a majestic vessel. There was no schooner
in those waters that could touch her, either for speed,
size, or (alas !) for pitching and rolling, in any and every
weather. Her ninety-five foot masts made a brave show,
when clothed with shining canvas ; her white hull, with its
scarlet encircling band, and the sun-coloured copper
glimmering at the water-line, stood out splendidly on the
blazing blue of the great Pacific. " A three-masted top-
sail schooner " was her official designation. The unofficial
names she was called in a calm, when the great Pacific
swell b. ought out her full rolling powers, are best left
unreported.
I cannot honestly advise the elderly round-the-world-
tourist, doing the Pacific in orthodox style, to desert
steam for sail, and try the experience of voyaging " off
the track " among the islands never visited by liners. But
the true traveller, who wanders for the joy of wandering,
and is not afraid or unwilling to " rough it " a good deal,
will find a sailing trip in the Pacific among the most fasci-
nating of experiences. Beyond the radius of the belching
funnel a great peace reigns ; an absence of time, a pleasant
carelessness about all the weighty and tiresome things
that may be happening outside the magic circle of still
blue ocean. There is no " let-her-slide " spirit in the
whole world to compare with that which blossoms spon-
taneously on the sun-white decks of a Pacific schooner.
120 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Looking back upon all the island boats that I have known,
I may say that there was not so much discipline among
the lot as would have run a single cross-channel boat at
home, that every one was satisfied if the officers refrained
from " jamborees " between ports ; if some one was some-
times at the wheel, and if the native crew knew enough of
the ropes to work the ship reasonably well, in the intervals
of line-fishing and chorus-singing. And in one and all,
whatever might happen to passengers, cargo, ship, or crew,
" take things as they come," was the grand general rule.
" This is your cabin," said the cheerful little pirate of
a captain. He was celebrated as the " hardest case " in
the South Pacific, and looked not quite unworthy of his
reputation, though he was dressed as if for Bond Street in
the afternoon, and mannered (on that occasion) as if for an
evening party.
What I wanted to say, was " Good God ! " What I did
say was : " Oh, really ! very nice indeed." For I saw
at once that I must lie, and it seemed as well to obtain
the fullest possible advantage from the sin. There was no
use mincing words, or morals, in such a case.
The cabin had a floor exactly the size of my smallest
flat box, which filled it so neatly that I had to stand on the
lid all the time I was in my room. It had a bunk about
as large as a tight fit in coffins, and a small parrot-perch at
one side, which was not meant for parrots, but for me, to
perch on, if I wanted to lace my boots without committing
suicide when the ship was rolling. On the perch stood a
tin basin, to do duty as a washstand. There was a biscuit-
tin full of water underneath.
This was all that the cabin contained, except smells.
The latter, however, crowded it to its fullest capacity. It
had some mysterious communication with the hold, which
perfumed it strongly with the oppressive, oily stench of
ancient copra, and it had also a small door leading into the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 121
companion that went down to the engine- hole (one could
not call it a room), in which lived the tiny oil engine that
was supposed to start instantaneously, and work us out
of danger, in case of any sudden need. (I say supposed,
because But that comes after.)
This engine-hole had a smell of its own, a good deal
stronger than the engine (but that is not saying much)
compounded of dirt, bilge-water, and benzolene. The
smell joined in a sort of chorus with the copra odour of the
hold, and both were picked out and accentuated by a
sharp note of cockroach. It was the most symphonic
odour that I had ever encountered. As for the port, that,
I saw, would be screwed down most of the time owing to
the position of the cabin, low down on the main deck.
" Very nice," I repeated, smiling a smile of which I am
proud to this day. " Such a dear little cabin ! "
" I'm glad you like it," said the captain, evidently re-
lieved. " You see, there's four Government officials
coming round this trip, and that takes our only other
cabin. I chucked the bo'sun out of this ; he's sleeping
anywhere. Anything else you'd like ? *' he continued,
looking at the biscuit-tin and the shiny basin with so much
satisfaction that I guessed at once they were a startling
novelty the bo'sun having probably performed his toilet
on deck. " We don't have lady passengers on these trips,
as we aren't a Union liner exactly, but we're always ready
to do what we can to please every one."
" I want first of all a new mattress, and sheets that
haven't been washed in salt water, and then I want some
air and light, and thirty or forty cubic feet more space,
and I think, a new cabin, and I'm almost sure, another
ship," I said to myself. Aloud I added : " Nothing what-
ever, thank you ; it is charming," and then I went in and
shut the door, and sat down on my bunk, and said things,
that would not have passed muster in a Sunday-School,
for quite ten minutes.
What I had expected I don't know. Something in the
122 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Clark Russell line, I fear a sparkling little sea-parlour,
smelling of rope and brine, looking out on a deck " as white
as a peeled almond," and fitted with stern windows that
overhung half the horizon. It was borne in upon me, as I
sat there among the smells and ants and beetles, that I
was in for something as un-Clark-Russeily as possible.
" Well," I thought, " it will at least be all the newer.
And there is certainly no getting out of it."
So we spread our white wings, and fluttered away like
a great sea-butterfly, from underneath the green and
purple peaks of Kara tonga, far out on the wide Pacific.
And thereupon, because the rollers rolled, and the ship was
small, I went into my cabin, and for two days, like the
heroine of an Early Victorian romance, " closed my eyes,
and knew no more."
On the third day I was better, and in the afternoon
Mitiaro, one of the outer Cook Islands, rose on the horizon.
By three o'clock our boat had landed us the official
party, the captain, and myself on a beach of foam-white
coral sand, crowded with laughing, excited natives, all
intensely eager to see the " wahine papa," or foreign
woman. White men traders, missionaries, the Resident
Commissioner of the group had visited the island now and
again, but never a white woman before ; and though
many had been away and seen such wonders, more had not.
The officials went away to hold a court of justice ; the
captain and myself, before we had walked half across the
beach, being captured by an excited band of jolly brown
men and women, all in their Sunday best shirts and pareos,
and long trailing gowns. They seized us by our elbows,
and literally ran us up to the house of the principal chief,
singing triumphantly. Along the neatest of coral sand
paths we went, among groves of palm and banana, up to
a real native house, built with a high " rau " roof, and airy
birdcage walls. About half the island was collected here,
driaking cocoanuts, eating bananas, staring, talking,
laughing. In spite of their excitement, however, they were
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 123
exceedingly courteous, offering me the best seat in the
house a real European chair, used as a sort of throne
by the chief himself fanning myself and my guide in-
dustriously as we sat, pressing everything eatable in the
house on us, and doing their best, bare-footed brown
savages as they were, to make us enjoy our visit.
All islanders are not courteous and considerate, but
the huge majority certainly are. You shall look many
a day and many a week among the sea-countries of the
Pacific, before you meet with as much rudeness, selfish-
ness, or unkindness, as you may meet any day without
looking at all, on any railway platform of any town of
civilised white England. And not from one end of the
South Seas to the other, shall you hear anything like the
harsh, loud, unmusical voice of the dominant race, in a
native mouth. Soft and gentle always is the island speech,
musical and kind the speech of a race that knows neither
hurry nor greed, and for whom the days are long and
sweet, and " always afternoon."
When we went out to see the island, it was at the head
of a gay procession of men, women, and children, singing
ceaselessly, in loud metallic chants and choruses. Shy
of the strange white apparition at first, the women grew
bolder by degrees, and hung long necklaces of flowers and
leaves and scented berries round my neck. They took my
hat away, and returned it covered with feathery reva-reva
plumes, made from the inner crown of the palm-tree. They
produced a native dancing kilt, like a little crinoline, made
of arrowroot fibre, dyed pink, and tied it round my waist,
over my tailor skirt, explaining the while (through the
captain, who interpreted), 'that the knot of the girdle was
fastened in such a way as to cast a spell on me, and
that I should inevitably be obliged to return to the island.
(It is perhaps worthy of note that I did, though at the time
of my first visit there seemed no chance of the ship calling
again.) Decked out after this fashion, I had a sucrh o ;
on my return to the schooner, and was greeted with hc\v3s
124 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
of delight on the part of my fellow-passengers, who had
managed to escape adornment, being less of a novelty. It
was of course impossible to remove the ornaments without
offending the givers.
More houses, and more hosts, standing like Lewis
Carroll's crocodile on their thresholds, to welcome me in
" with gently smiling jaws." We visited till we were tired
of visiting, and then strolled about the town. Cool, fresh,
and clean are the houses of little Mitiaro, dotted about
its three miles' length. Their high deep-gabled roofs of
plaited pandanus leaf keep out the heat of the staring sun ;
through their walls of smoothed and fitted canes the sea-
wind blows and the green lagoon gleams dimly : the
snowy coral pebbles that carpet all the floor reflect a softly
pleasant light into the dusk, unwindowed dwelling. Out-
side, the palm-trees rustle endlessly, and the surf sings on
the reef the long, low, perilous sweet song of the dreamy
South Sea world the song that has lured so many away
into these lonely coral lands, to remember their Northern
loves and homes no more the song that, once heard, will
whisper through the inmost chambers of the heart, across
the years, and across the world till death.
Yet why not ?
Why not ? The thought followed me as ceaselessly as
the trampling of the surf (now, in the open, loud and
triumphant, like the galloping of a victorious army) while
I wandered over the little island, up and down the coral
sand paths that led through groves of feathery ironwood,
through quaintly regular, low, rich green shrubberies,
starred with pale pink blossoms.; among wild grey pinnacles
of fantastic rock, clothed in trailing vines always towards
the open sky and the limitless blue sea. Why not ? In
England, even yet,
We are not cotton-spinners all,
nor are we all old, blood-chilled by the frost of conven-
tionality, dyed ingrain with the conviction that there is
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 125
nothing but vagabondage and ne'er-do-well-ism away from
the ring of the professions, or an office desk in the E.G.
district. For the young and adventurous, the South Seas
hold as fair prospects as any other semi-civilised portion
of the globe. For those who have seen and have lived, and
are wearied to death of the life and cities and competition,
the island world offers remoteness, beauty, rest, and peace,
unmatched in the round of the swinging earth. And to
all alike it offers that most savoury morsel of life's banquet
freedom. Freedom and a biscuit taste better to many
a young Anglo-Saxon than stalled ox seasoned with the
bitter herbs of dependence ; but the one is always at hand,
and the other very far away.
Well, the gulf can be spanned ; but he who cannot do
the spanning, and must long and dream unsatisfied all his
life, had best take comfort : it had not been for his good.
The Islands are for the man of resource ; again, of re-
source ; and once more, of resource. Look among the
lowest huts of the lowest quarters that cling to towns in
the big islands, and there, gone native, and lost to his
race, you shall find the man who was an excellent fellow
once but who in emergency or difficulty, " didn't know
what to do."
If there is a lesson in the above, he who needs it will
find it.
Mitiaro is the island, already referred to, where dried
bananas are prepared. The natives make up their fruit
in this way for market, because steamers never call, and
sailing vessels only come at long and irregular intervals.
A very small quantity goes down in this way to Auckland,
and I heard, in a general way, that there were supposed
to be one or two other islands here and there about the
Pacific, where the same trade was carried on. One cannot,
however, buy preserved bananas in the colonies, unless by
a special chance, so the purchasing public knows- nothing
of them, and is unaware what it misses. In the opinion
126 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
of most who have tried them, the fruit, dried and com-
pressed in the Mitiaro way, is superior to dried figs. It
is not only a substitute for fresh bananas, but a dainty in
itself. The whaling ships pick up an occasional consignment
in out-of-the-way places, and are therefore familiar with
them, but one never sees them on a steamer. There may
be useful hints, for intending settlers, in these stray facts.
We lay over-night at Mitiaro, and got off in the morning.
Aitutaki was our next place of call, and we reached it in
about a day. It is, next to Raratonga, the most important
island of the group, possessing a large mission station,
a Government agent, and a post-office. It enjoys a call
once a month from the Union steamer, and is therefore a
much more sophisticated place than Mitiaro. In size it
is inferior to Raratonga and Atiu, being only seven square
miles in extent. Its population is officially returned as
1,170. These are almost all natives, the white popu'ation
including only the Government agent, two or three mis-
sionaries, and a couple of traders.
It is bright morning 'when we make Aitutaki, and the
sea is so vividly blue, as we push off in the boat, that I
wonder my fingers do not come out sapphire-coloured
.when I dip them in. And I think, as the eight brown
arms pull us vigorously shoreward, that no one in the
temperate climes knows, or ever can know, what these
sea-colours of the tropics are like, because the North has
no words that express them. How, indeed, should it have ?
We are rowing, as fast as we can go, towards a great
white ruffle of foam ruled like a line across the blue, blue
sea. Inside this line there lies, to all appearance, an
immense raised plain of green jade or aquamarine, with
a palmy, plumy island, cinctured by a pearly beach, far
away in the middle. Other islands, smaller and farther
away, stand out upon the surface of this strange green
circle here and there, all enclosed within the magic ring
of tumbling foam, more than five miles across, that sets
them apart from the wide blue sea. It is only a lagoon of
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 127
atoll formation, but it looks like a piece of enamelled
jewel- work, done by the hand of some ocean giant, so great
that the huge sea-serpent itself should be only a bracelet
for his arm. The raised appearance of the lagoon is one
of the strangest things I have yet seen, though it is merely
an optical delusion, created by contrast in colour.
We are fortunate, too, in seeing what every one does
not see a distinct green shade in the few white clouds
that overhang the surface of the lagoon. Here in Aitutaki
a great part of the sky is sometimes coloured green by
the reflections from the water, and it is a sight worth
witnessing.
Through an opening in the reef we enter the boatmen
pulling hard against the outward rush of the tide, which
runs here like a cataract at times and glide easily across
the mile or so of shallow water that lies between us and
the shore. One or two splendid whale-boats pass us,
manned by native crews, and the other passengers tell me
that these boats are all made by the Aitutakians them-
selves, who are excellent builders.
There is a very decent little wharf to land on, and of
course, the usual excited, decorated crowd to receive us,
and follow us about. I am getting quite used now to
going round at the head of a continual procession, to being
hung over with chains of flowers and berries, and cease-
lessly fed with bananas and cocoanuts, so the crowd does
not interfere with my enjoyment of the new island. We
are going to stop a day or two here, and there will be time
to see everything.
When you sleep as a rule in a bunk possessing every
attribute of a coffin (except the restfulness which one is
led to expect in a bed of that nature), you do not require
much pressing to accept an invitation to " dine and sleep "
on shore. Tau Ariki (which means Chieftainess, or
Countess, or Duchess, Tau) lives in Aitutaki, and she had
met me in Raratonga, so she sent me a hearty invitation
to spend the night at her house, and I accepted it.
128 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Tau is not by any means as great a personage as Makea,
or even as great as Tinomana, the lesser queen. She is an
Ariki all the same, however, and owns a good deal of land
in Aitutaki. Also, she is gloriously married to a white
ex-schooner mate, who can teach even the Aitutakians
something about boat-building, and she is travelled and
finished^ having been a trip to Auckland the ambition
of every Cook Islander. So Tau Ariki is a person of im-
portance in her own small circle, and was allowed by the
natives of the town to have the undoubted first right to
entertain the white woman.
Tau's house, in the middle of the rambling, jungly,
green street of the little town, proved to be a wooden
bungalow with a verandah and a tin roof, very ugly, but
very fine to native eyes. There were tables and chairs
in the " parlour " ; and the inevitable boiled fowl that
takes the place of the fatted calf, in Pacific cookery, was
served up on a china plate. A rich woman, Tau, and
one who knew how the " tangata papa " (white folk)
should be entertained !
She gave me a bedroom all to myself, with a smile
that showed complete understanding of the foolish fads
of the " wahine papa." It had a large " imported " glass
window, giving on the main street of the town, and offering,
through its lack of blinds, such a fine, free show for the
interested populace, that I was obliged to go to bed in
the dark. There was a real bed in the room, covered with
a patchwork quilt of a unique and striking design, repre-
senting a very realistic scarlet devil some four feet long.
It seemed to me the kind of quilt that would need a good
conscience and a blameless record, on the part of the
sleeper reposing under it. To wake in the middle of the
night unexpectedly, with the moonlight streaming in,
forget for the moment where you were, and, looking round
to find a landmark, drop your startled eyes upon that
scarlet fiend, sprawling all over your chest Well, I
had a good conscience, or none I do not know which
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 129
so I felt the red devil would not disturb my slumbers, and
he did not.
There was nothing else in the room, except a new,
gold-laced, steamship officer's cap, whereto there seemed
neither history nor owner, reposing on the x pillow. If
there was any mystery about the cap, I never knew it.
I put it out on the windowsill, and a hen laid an egg in
it next morning, and no doubt the hen lived happily ever
after, and I hope the officer -did, and that is all. It seems
pathetic, but I do not know why.
There was nothing to wash in, but Tau knew her
manners, and was quite aware that I might have a
prejudice against sitting in a washing-tub on either the
front or the back verandah, to have buckets emptied on
my head in the morning. So she made haste to leave a
kerosene tin full of water, before going to her camphorwood
chest, and extracting a pink silk dress trimmed with
yellow lace, for me to sleep in.
" I'm afraid that won't do ; it's too too good to sleep
in," I remarked.
" Nothing too good for you, you too much good self ! "
was the amiable reply.
"But I could not sleep in it, Tau. There's there's
too much of it," I objected, not knowing how to word
my refusal without impoliteness.
" All right," commented my hostess, throwing a glance
at the purple gloom of the torrid hot-season night out-
side. " He plenty hot. I get you pareo, all same mine."
And she disinterred a brief cotton kilt of red and yellow,
considerably smaller than a Highlander's.
" That's too little," objected the exacting guest, rather
to poor Tau's perplexity. How was one to please such a
visitor ? At last, however, after refusing a figured muslin
robe that was as transparent as a dancing-robe of classic
Ionia (there are other analogies between those robes, if
one might go into the subject ; but I fear the British
public must not be told about them), and a pink shirt
130 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
belonging to the white husband, a neat cotton day gown
was discovered, offered, and accepted, and peace reigned
once more in the exceedingly public guest-chamber of
Tau Ariki's house.
Concerning quilts, by the way, one may here add a
short note. Patchwork is the delight of the Cook Island
women, and has been so, ever since that absorbing pastime
was first introduced to them by the missionaries' wives.
They are extremely clever at it, and often invent their own
patterns. Sometimes, however, they copy any startling
device that they may chance to see the more original,
the better. A really good patchwork quilt is considered
a possession of great value, and (one is sorry to say) often
preferred to the fine, beautifully hand-woven mats in
which the islanders used to excel. They still make mats in
large numbers, but the patchwork quilt has spoilt their
taste for the finer mats, and these latter are getting
scarce.
In the morning, shark-catching was the order of the
day. Aitutaki is celebrated for this sport all over Austra-
lasia, and I was very glad to get a chance of joining in it.
One does not catch sharks, in Aitutaki, after the usual
island fashion, which is much like the way familiar to all
sea-faring fol k hook and line, and a lump of bad pork,
and tow the monster to the shore when you have got him.
No, there is something more exciting in store for the
visitor^ who goes a-fishing in Aitutaki lagoon. The water
is very shallow for the most part, and heats up quickly with
the sun, especially when the day is dead calm, and there
is not a ripple to break the force of the rays. By noon, the
lagoon is unbearably warm in all the shallow parts, and
the | sharks which inhabit it in large numbers, begin to
feel uncomfortable. Some of them make for the opening
in the reef, and get out into the cooler sea beyond. Others,
one will suppose, are lazy, and do not want to be troubled
to swim so far. So they head for the coral patches here
and there, and lie on the sand in the shelter of the rocks,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 131
their bodies thrust as far into the clefts and crannies of
the coral as they can manage to get. This is the
Aitutakian's opportunity. He is perfectly fearless in
the water, and he knows that the shark is, after all, a
stupid brute. So he arms himself with a knife, takes a
strong rope, noosed in a slip-knot at one end, in his hand,
and dives from his whale-boat into the warm green water,
where he has marked the latter end of a shark sticking
out from a patch of coral, some three or four fathoms
underneath the surface.
The shark, being head in, does not see anything, but (
by-and-by he becomes aware of a delicate tickling all
along his massive ribs, and as he rather likes this, he stays
quite still, and enjoys it. It is the Aitutakian, tickling
him as boys tickle a trout in a stream at home, and for
exactly the same reason. He has got the noose in his left
hand, and his aim is to slip it over the shark's tail, while he
distracts the brute's attention by pleasantly tickling
with the other hand. Perhaps he manages this at the first
attempt perhaps he is obliged to rise to the surface, and
take a breath of air, going down again to have a second
try. But, in any case, he is pretty sure to get the noose
on before the shark suspects anything. Once that is
accomplished, he rises to the suface like a shooting air-
bubble, swings himself into the boat, and gives the order
to " haul in ! "
The men in the boat lay hold of the rope, tighten with
a sharp jerk, and tail on. Now the shark begins to realise
that something has happened ; and realises it still more
fully in another minute or two, when he finds himself
fighting for his life on the gunwale of a rocking boat,
against half a dozen islanders armed with knives and
axes. The battle is short ; the great brute is soon dis-
abled by a smashing blow on the tail, and in another hour
or two the village is feeding fat on his meat, and his fins are
drying in the sun, to be sold to the trader by-and-by, for
export to China. No dinner-party in China is complete
5*
132 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
without a dish of daintily dressed shark's fins, and a good
proportion of the supply comes from the Pacific.
This is shark-fishing, as practised in Aitutaki. But
I was not destined to see it at its best, for the day turned
out breezy, and there was such a ripple upon the water
that the natives declared the sharks would be extremely
difficult to see or capture. Nevertheless, the captain and
I decided to go, as there was a chance, though a faint one.
We hired a boat, and took with us, as well as the rowers,
Oki, a diver of renown. If Oki could not raise a shark for
us, it was certain that no one could.
The captain of the missionary steamer John Williams
had told me about the fishing some weeks before, and
added that he had seen a shark caught himself, and tried
to photograph it, but the photo was not a success, because,
as he put it, " the shark moved ! "
This story wandered about in my mind as we shot across
the lagoon to the fishing grounds, and the boat began to
look uncomfortably small. " What does the shark do
when you get it in the boat ? " I inquired rather anxiously.
" Makes the devil of a row, and the devil of a mess,"
said our own captain cheerfully. " But don't you mind
him. Let sharks alone, and they'll let you alone ; that's
always been my experience."
Conscious that I was never unkind to animals, not
even tigers or sharks, I tried to feel at ease. But I did
not quite succeed, until we got to the coral beds, and Oki
put everything else out of my head by going head first
overboard, and starting out among the rocks below (it
was calmer here, and we could see him pretty plainly)
to look for a shark.
His thin brown body showed up shadowy and wavering,
upon the sands at the bottom, as he glided like a fish
all along the patch of reef, inspecting every cave or crack
where a shark might hide. He did not seem to be incom-
moded in the least by the three or four fathoms of water
above him, but moved about as quietly and easily as if
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 133
he had been .swimming on the surface. I felt sure he must
be at the point of death, as the seconds flew by, and he
still glided in and out of the rocks with nothing but the
gleam of his white pareo to show his whereabouts, when-
ever he slipped into the shadow of one of the many clefts
in which a shark might lie hidden. But Oki knew very
well what he was about, and he did not seem at all ex-
hausted when he shot to the surface again, after rather
more than two minutes' absence, and told us gloomily
that " No shark stop ! "
We tried again, and again. Oki took the slip knot
down with him every time and every time he brought it
up in his hand, unused. Melancholy, deep and silent,
settled upon the boat. But at last the luck changed ;
our diver came up, and announced with a smile, that there
was a shark down there, very far into the coral, and
if he could only reach the animal's tail, it would be all
right.
One of the boatmen at this went to help him, and
together they swam down to the bottom, and began
fumbling interminably in the shadow. It was clear that
they were making every effort to tempt the shark out,
for one could see Oki straining wildly with his arm in the
cleft, " tickling " industriously, while the other hovered
head downwards outside, trailing the noose like a loop
of seaweed in his hand. But all proved vain. Exhausted,
the men rose at last, and gave it up. The shark was too
far in, they said, and the noose could not be got on. If
we remembered, they had told us it was not a good day,
and they hoped we thought enough had been done. As
for themselves, they were very tired doing our pleasure,
and their lungs were sore, but they thought some plug
tobacco the black sticky kind, and a good deal of it
would set them all right again.
This was outside the letter of the agreement, which
had included a good price for the boat and nothing else ;
but we promised some tobacco, when the stores should be
5t
134 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
reached, and asked for some more particulars about the
fishing.
" Do you ever find the shark head out, instead of tail
out ? " I queried.
" Yes, sometime he come head out," said Oki, reversing
a green cocoanut on his nose, and swallowing in great
gulps.
I waited till he had finished before I asked :
" What happens then ? "
" Shark he fight, and we fight 'too," said Oki simply.
" And which wins ? "
" All the time the Aitutaki boy he win, but sometime
the shark he win too," was the cryptic reply.
Shark fins, I was told, sell for about six shillings a pound.
Some of the traders in the islands further north, where
sharks are abundant, make a good deal of money taking
the fish on a hook and line, and drying the fins for sale.
It should be a fairly profitable industry, as the fins of a
medium shark appear to weigh a good deal not less than
three or four pounds, at a guess.
It was on my second visit to Aitutaki that I went out
to the lesser islands of the lagoon ; but the tale of that
expedition may well come here.
These islets are of various sizes, from a mere rock with
a couple of palms on it, to a fertile piece of land over a
mile long, richly grown and wooded. They all lie within
the great lagoon, and are therefore sheltered by a natural
breakwater of the reef from the violence of the storms
that occur in the rainy season. The nearest is about three
miles from the mainland. All are quite uninhabited, and
no particular value is set on them by anybody. They
belong to the various chief families of the big island, but
any one who wished to rent one in perpetuity (the New
Zealand Government laws, which rule here, do not permit
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 135
outright sale) could probably secure it for a few pounds a
year.
I was anxious to see them, for it seemed to me that
islands suited to the realisation of Robinson Crusoe dreams
could hardly be found the wide Pacific over. A desolate
isle five hundred miles from anywhere, sounds well in a
story, but the romance of such a spot is apt to wear very
thin indeed after a few months, if one may believe the
experiences of those who have tried it. Practical details
are seldom considered by would-be Crusoes ; they have,
however, a knack of thrusting themselves into the fore-
ground just when retreat is impossible. If you elect to
live on a remote island, how are you going to keep up
communication with the outer world ? You will want at
least a few commodities of civilisation from time to time,
and they cannot swim across half the great South Seas,
from Auckland or 'Frisco, up to your front verandah
unaided. You will want mails, newspapers, and letters,
unless haply you are a criminal flying from the near neigh-
bourhood of the black cap and the drop and how are
these to come ? Trading schooners will not call at your
island unless you have plenty of cargo for them, and even
then, you may not see them twice a year. Steamers,
of course, you must not expect. If you keep a small
vessel of your own, you must be thoroughly sea-trained
to run and navigate her, and you will need to bring a few
island men to your kingdom as crew, and they will want
to go home again, and make trouble, and finally run off
with your ship some dark night, and maroon you there
for good. No, the " desert " island idea is best left to the
shelves of the school library.
But at Aitutaki, and in some similar collections of atoll
islands Robinson Crusoe's way is made easy and pleasant
or so it seemed to me, crossing the lagoon that afternoon
on my way to the islets that were lying waste and un-
inhabited out on its broad expanse. From three to five
miles away from the mainland, these islets are sufficiently
136 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
isolated for any one who has not quarrelled with the
whole human race. There is a steamer once a month,
at the little pier near the settlement. There are one or
two stores on the 'main island, where common provisions,
cotton stuffs, spades, and knives, and such simple things,
can be purchased. The lagoon is usually so calm that a
native canoe would serve all ordinary needs of com-
munication, for any one living on an islet. A house could
be built in a few days, of the native type : and a good
concrete bungalow could be put up with native help, in
a very few weeks. Why should any one want to live in
such a spot ? Well, it is not necessary to argue out that
question, because I have found by experience that quite
a remarkable number of people do. It was for those people
that I crossed the lagoon that day, and I know I shall
have their thanks.
A whale-boat and a crew were necessary for the trip.
I engaged both in the village, and went down to the wharf
followed by a " tail " of seven stalwart islanders, dressed
in white and crimson pareos, berry necklaces, and a curiously
representative collection of steamship caps and jerseys.
The Aitutakian is an inveterate traveller, and all these
men had been away in a steamer somewhere as deck hands
or else their friends had, and they had begged a steamer cap
and jersey or two here and there : it was ah 1 the same to
them. The P. & O. the Union S.S. Co. of New Zealand
the Shaw, Savill, and Albion the Orient Burns Philp
were all represented (so far as caps and jerseys went)
by my boat's crew, and very well pleased with themselves
and their poached attire they evidently were.
Provisions had to be purchased, they declared, as we
should not be back before afternoon. So into the big store
the whole party went to see me victual the ship. I bought
biscuits and meat, exactly half what they asked, and they
were so uplifted with joy at the amount of the supplies
that they sang all the way down to the boat ; and, once
in it, treated me to an exhibition of rowing, the like of
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 137
which I never expect to see again. The Aitutaki man
is the smartest boatman, and the best hand with an oar,
in the Southern Pacific. Never a man-of-war comes round
the Cook group that her men do not try conclusions with
the Aitutakians, and if report speaks truth, the result is not
always flattering to British pride. Nor is this astonishing,
to any one who has seen these islanders row. We had
six miles of a pull, and every inch was against a strong head
wind, and through a decidedly choppy sea. Yet, in spite
of these handicaps, the men rowed the whole way at racing
pace, oars springing, spray flying, the great whale-boat
tearing through the water as though a mortal enemy were
in pursuit. The coxswain, in the stern, kept slyly urging
the rowers on to let the foreign woman see what they, could
do, and they pulled " all out " or what looked extremely
like it from start to finish. I do not think any white crew
that ever held an oar could have lived with that splendid
six-mile rush. And when we neared the first island
and gradually slacked speed, there was not one among those
seven mighty chests that heaved faster than at the start.
Truly, I thought, they had earned their picnic.
But the islets ! If Raratonga was the realisation of
a childish dream, this was the embodiment of a vision
of fairyland. There can surely be nothing on earth more
lovely than the islet constellation enclosed by Aitutaki
reef. The water, shallow, sun-jewelled, and spread out
over a bed of spotless coral sand, is coloured with a brilliance
that is simply incredible. Emerald and jade and sapphire
yes, one expects these, in the hues of tropic seas. But
when it comes to whole tracts of glancing heliotrope and
hyacinth, shot with unnamable shades of melted turquoise
and silver, and all a-quiver with pulsations of flashing
greens, for which there is no name in any language under
the pallid northern or burning southern sun then, the
thing becomes indescribable, and one can only say :
" There is something in that little corner of earth beyond
the touch of words, so you will never know anything
138 IN THE 'STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
it, unless you too go there, and see it for yourself. And when
you have seen, you will come away burning to describe,
as I was but you will not be able."
In the midst of this magical sea, rise the islets themselves
fairyland every one. Their little beaches are sparkling
white, as only a coral beach can be ; palm-trees, heavy-
headed with their loads of huge green nuts, cluster thick
along the shores ; coral-trees drop their blood-red flowers
into the glass-like water of the lagoon ; ripe oranges swing
their glowing lamps among the darker green of the woods
that rise behind. Big white clams with goffered shells,
each holding meat enough for one man's dinner, gleam
along the edges of the shore ; large, long-legged crabs
wander rustling and rattling among the stones. The
murmur of the barrier reef is very far away ; its thin
white line of foam gleams out a long way off, under a low
horizon, sky shot strangely with lilac blue a lonely, lovely,
exquisite place, the like of which one might seek the world
all over, and never find again.
We landed on the sand, and I set about exploring, while
the men knocked down cocoanuts, and squatted in the
shade to drink them, and suck fresh oranges. The island
on which we had landed was one of the smaller ones, not
more than an acre or two in extent. It rose to a high point
in the centre, and was so thickly wooded all over, that I
could hardly make my way through. There was no sign
of life or habitation, and the ripe fruit was everywhere
rotting on the ground.
I pictured the little islet with a high brown roof peeping
out among its palms, a neatly kept pathway cut through
the bush, and a snug boathouse on the shore, covering a
fine whaleboat, while a graceful native canoe lay on the
sand, ready for any one to lift down into the water at any
minute. I wonder, will the picture ever body itself out
in real, for some tired-out soul, weary of cities and competi-
tion, or some pair of lovers, who find the world well lost
in each other, here among the far islands of the sweet
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 139
Southern Seas ? I shall never know, for the " sea-bird's
feather " was in the pillow on which I slept my first baby
sleep, and I wander always on. But it may be that these
words will be read by some to whom they are, or shall be,
a part of life's own history.
We did not get to the other islands that day, partly
because I wasted so much time looking for shells, and
partly because the largest were still some miles away, and
the wind was stronger than ever. One, I heard, had
ground enough for a paying plantation, and was already
fairly well supplied with cocoanuts. All are perfectly
healthy and free from fevers of any kind, and though
mosquitoes are present in rather large numbers, careful
clearing of their breeding grounds would in time drive
them away.
******
In case author, or publishers, should be inundated with
inquiries about South Sea Islands, it may be as well to
say that aU over the Pacific, the Governors, Commissioners,
and Resident Agents of the various groups are always
ready to furnish information to honest inquirers.
CHAPTER VIII
Jumping a Coral Reef The Great Wall of the Makatea
Makaia's Wonderful Staircases A Clothing Club of the
Pacific Cool Costumes in Atiu The Lands that lie waste
Mystery of a Vanished Tribe Fashions in Hair-Dressing
The Sign-Language of the Sex Invited to a Feast.
MANGAIA, where we next stopped, proved quite
an exciting place. You .cannot land upon Mangaia
in the ordinary way : the reef that surrounds it is un-
broken, and girdles the whole island in a fortress moat of its
own. The only way to land is to get into one of the number-
less native canoes that crowd about the ship, and let the
copper-coloured owner take you over the reef in his own
way, which is the determined and decisive way of a steeple-
chaser at a fence. It is most excellent fun and a new thing
in sensations. As the little dug-out made of nothing
more elaborate than a hollowed mango log, with an out-
rigger at one side rushes shoreward on the crest of a
foaming roller, you watch with rather anxious interest the.
movements of the dusky boatman, who poises his paddle
in the air, waits, looks, and strikes the water, always at
exactly the right moment usually when you are just
beginning to think of kicking off your shoes.
There is the reef right in front, a pearly shadow in the
blue, with up-springing spears of ivory, bared like the
teeth of a tiger, when the wave rolls back. Are we going to
jump that ? We are indeed. The boatman lifts his
paddle we sweep upwards on the sloping blue satin
neck of a curling wave. No no, that will not do not
this time. He backs water we hang on the crest of the
wave but we are not going to be drowned, or snapped
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 141
up by the sharks that haunt the reefs, because the boat-
man is a born islander, and what he does not know about
canoeing over a reef, neither you nor I need attempt to
teach him. Another wave, a monster this time, swinging us
up into the air as if we were a couple of grasshoppers out
paddling in a walnut shell. That will do : here she goes !
The wave roars with us ; the wicked white fangs gleam
on either hand : our rough thick keel scrapes agonisingly
on the coral, and there is a smother of foam and tumbling
blue and bursting green all about the cranky little craft.
Bump ! we have struck we strike again, but it does not
seem to matter in the least : over we go, and we are in
the smooth, safe, shallow green water inside, and across
the reef. And here are a dozen men of Mangaia, splashing
about in the lagoon, ready to pick up the visitor in their
powerful arms as soon as the canoe grounds in the shallow
water, and carry her ashore.
That is how one lands on Mangaia.
This island is of a good size, being some thirty mile&
in circumference. Its formation is very notable, being
indeed rather celebrated among geologists. It is supposed
to be of volcanic origin, like most of the " high " islands.
From the sea, it looks much like any other place of the
same size. But, going inland, one is astonished to find
that a mere strip of land close round the coast terminates
the ground available for walking on. A high irregular
cliff wall, from fifty to a hundred feet in height, encloses
the whole interior of the island, which thus resembles in
shape a very large cup set on a very small saucer. Within
the cup lie all fertile lands, the taro beds, the yam fields,
the pineapple patches, the tangled bush, where cotton
used to be grown in the days of the American war, the low
green shrubberies that produce the finest coffee in the Cook
Islands. To reach them, there is only one way that
furnished by a really wonderful rocky staircase, built in
prehistoric times by the ancestors of the present natives.
If one were to find such a work in any other of the Cook
142 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Islands one might regard it as proof positive of the existence
of an older and more industrious race, in the days before
the New Zealand Maori took possession of these lands, and
grew effeminate and idle in the occupying.
But the people of Mangaia, though identical in descent
with incurably indolent and sensual Aitutakians and
Raratongans, have been moulded by their environment to
a degree that amounts to an actual difference in character.
The barrier reef has always prevented the free communica-
tion enjoyed by other islands, so that they were able to
develop along their own lines of character, without modifi-
cation from outside. With an island that possessed only
a limited amount of fertile land, a matchless fortress in the
interior, and a complete barrier about the exterior, it was
a foregone conclusion that the Mangaians should become
inhospitable, reserved, and hard-working, as compared
with the prodigally generous and idle folk of the open and
fertile islands. They did so. In the days before the
missions, some sixty years ago, the Mangaians were the
fiercest cannibals in the group, and determinedly hostile to
strangers : nor were they ever as pleasure-loving as the
other Cook Islanders. To-day they are harder in character
than the folk of the other islands ; kindly to strangers,
but hardly gushing in their reception of them, and so much
more industrious than the Aitutakians or Raratongans
that Mangaian men are sought as servants all over the
group.
There is, therefore, no difficulty in understanding how
the people of Mangaia found energy and time to construct
the staircases that span the great wall of " Makatea,"
enclosing the inner part of the island. Being obliged day
after day to climb with infinite pains the sharp rocky heights
of the cliff, in order to get from the fishing grounds to the
plantations, they would certainly not be long in devising
some means of lessening this inconvenience. The stair-
cases which are the result must have taken many years and
much labour in constructing, and it is difficult to under-
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 143
stand how a people unacquainted with the use of any
mechanical contrivance could have placed so many large
blocks of stone in the positions which they occupy. The
steps are very high and irregular, and on an extremely
torrid afternoon it is not exactly the walk one would
choose for pure enjoyment. However, our time in Mangaia
was short, so I explained to a native girl that I wanted
to see the Makatea, and she at once called up half the
village to join the procession.
Attended, therefore, by my young guide and the in-
evitable following, I went up the mighty stairs, and across
the tract of level land lying at the top. It is nearly a
mile before one comes upon the cup-like valley in the centre
of the island, so it must be allowed that the rim of the
cup is a thick one. After a pleasant walk through groves
of cocoanut and guava, we came upon the inner side of
the wall, and stood on the edge of a great grey circular
cliff, spiked, spired, and towered with extraordinary
eccentricity, and splendidly garlanded with falling masses
of sea-green creeper. At one point, a huge split in the
rock had evidently provided a foundation for the second
staircase, which was rougher than the first, made of great
blocks of stone irregularly laid here and there so as to
fill up the split in part, and give a foothold to the climber.
Still, it was a big piece of work, and must have taken a
good many years generations, perhaps to complete.
Down in the valley below, which seemed to be two or three
miles across, were all the native plantations and gardens,
and as we jumped down from block to block, we met
hard-faced muscular women toiling upwards with heavy
loads of vegetables and fruit. In the taro fields, terraced
so as to let a little stream trickle through and create an
artificial swamp, the workers seemed to be women only.
They dug and scraped in the thick mud under the burning
sun, leaving off their tasks long enough to stare and ques-
tion a little, and then setting stolidly to work again. The
men were probably out fishing or pigeon shooting. In
144 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
spite of Christianity, the island woman always carries
the heavy end of the load, where there is one to carry ; the
man is the hunter, the woman the labourer and beast of
burden, as in the cannibal times of long ago.
There are some remarkable caves in the island, and I went
into them for a mile or so, in company with the local
missionary, who kindly offered to act as guide.
Caves, however as most people will allow are much
alike in all parts of the earth, and there is nothing to
differentiate the long, dark, dripping passages, half-
glimpsed halls, gloomy crevasses, and dimly sparkling
stalactite candelabra of a South Sea Island cave, from those
of a cave near Brighton or the Land's End. There is no
need, therefore, to describe the caves of Mangaia further
than to say that they were quite up to the usual pattern,
and that at all events, they gave a touch of " Swiss Family
Robinson " to the island atmosphere that was pleasing to
the imagination.
It had, of course, nothing to do with Mangaia, but I
wondered as we walked back from the caves towards the
top of Makatea, how it was that the interesting ship-
wrecked people who live in caves as described in fiction,
never seem to be troubled with damp ? I have, personally,
never seen a cave out of a book that was not first cousin
to a showerbath, and I should be surprised if any One
else had. Who ever saw a genuine cave roof that was not
covered with stalactites, large or small ? and what makes
stalactites but endless drip ? If I were a shipwrecked
person, I should certainly prefer the temporary house the
" useful " character always puts up in half an hour with
the aid of four growing trees and the ship's mainsail, to
the cave that is invariably discovered in the second chapter.
I should know for certain that the former was the driest
even when it rained.
I cannot leave the subject of the strange Makatea,
without telling yet a little more about it, for it has not
often been described or mentioned. Geologists say that it
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 145
is the product of a double volcanic upheaval. The first
convulsion threw up the island itself, and, in the course
of ages, the usual encircling reef of coral was built up round
it by the busy coral insects, working under the water.
Then came a second upheaval, and the island and reef
together were cast up two hundred feet. The Makatea
is thus the ancient reef that once surrounded the original
small island which is represented by a crown of heights
in the middle of the cup of the crater, and by the sunk-
down valley about it. The narrow strip of land that edges
the beach to-day is a later formation.
One cannot mistake the character of the great coral cliff,
which is quite unlike any kind of stone, or indeed anything
but itself. The passing ages have turned it to rock, but
to rock which is hollowed in every direction with caves,
small and great, and filled with fossil shells as a pudding
is filled with plums. No unprotected foot can tread the
surface of these heights, which are simply a mass of serried
grey spears, sharp and cruel as the top of a wall protected
by broken glass. The natives, if convenience leads them
to cross any part of the Makatea other than the staircases,
usually protect their feet with thick sandals of woven coir
fastened on with cords. One can imagine how much this
peculiar protection must have added to the safety of the
interior of the island, in the old predatory days.
The caves were often used for burying places in time
gone by, and it is only a few years since a " find " of skulls
of a type differing in several particulars from those of
the present day, was made in one of the largest caves by
a schooner captain. Rumour says that he sold them for a
good price, but the purchasers were not known.
Another use of the coral caves in the old days (over
fifty years ago) was a shelter for fugitives of various kinds.
The Mangaians were not a pleasant people, in those times,
either to strangers or each other. The outsider was cooked
and eaten for the mere offence of presuming to exist. The
Mangaian was never sure that some one who had a spite
146 IN .THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
against him would not murder him probably by poison'
in the use of which these people were as expert as the Borgias
themselves. Under these circumstances, the caves were
never without their occupants, living in secret, and creeping
put at night to pick up a little food. Many and romantic
are the stories told by the missionaries and traders of these
stirring times, if I had space to relate them.
Mangaia is a beautiful island, but that goes without
saying, in the exquisite Cook Group. It has about half
a dozen white people, and the native population is said
to number something under two thousand.
Though a pleasant island and a healthy one, it cannot
he recommended to planters, as there is not an inch of
land available for rent. The natives themselves are keen
traders and bargainers, and export much of their fruit and
copra direct to Auckland. Most of what they make is
spent in trade-finery, for which they have an uncontrollable
passion. On Sundays, the churches are a very flower-
garden of frippery, the men turning out in the most
brilliant of shirts, ties, and suits, the women decking
themselves in long loose robes of muslin, sateen, or cheap
silk, coloured in the most screaming hues pea-green,
royal blue, scarlet, and orange being all strong favourites.
Their hats, made by themselves out of silky arrowroot
fibre, are often trimmed with . the costliest ribbons and
artificial flowers, and even with ostrich plumes to the
value of two or three pounds. It is somewhat puzzling, I
was told, to see several entire families got up in the same
extraordinary style, unless you know the reason, which is,
that these various households have joined together in a
club, putting all the money they have made into one purse,
and sending it down to Auckland on their own account for
a bale of gorgeous clothing, all alike. Thus you will see
twenty or thirty women, on a Sunday morning, dressed
alike in robes of vermilion satinette, and wearing huge hats,
crowned by three ostrich feathers, red, yellow, and blue,
arranged after the fashion of the Prince of Wales's crest.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 147
This is one of the clubs, and there are sure to be others
that vie with them in startling attire. Such are the weak-
nesses after all, venial ones indeed of the sturdy-souled
Mangaian.
Atiu was our next stop, and here the reef-jumping
process had to be repeated in another form. The ship's
whale-boat, steered by our captain, who was the cleverest
hand at the big sixteen-foot steer-oar of any white man I
have ever seen, approached the edge of the reef, and
danced about in front of it, until the passengers found an
opportunity of leaping out on to it. Then, rather wet-
footed (but no one minded that, in a temperature like the
hot room of a Turkish bath) we were picked up by natives
waiting on the shallow side, and carried through the
lagoon, which was not more than a foot or two deep.
On landing, we found a number of the men standing
on the shore ready to receive the Commissioner. They
had been fishing, and were clad simply and coolly in a rag
and a feather apiece the latter worn in the hair, over one
ear. Their dress, however, did not seem to embarrass
them at all, and they came forward and shook hands with
every one, quite politely. All the Cook islanders are
supposed to be Christianised and civilised, but in some
parts of the group the civilisation, at all events, seems
to be wearing very thin, and this is notably the case in
Atiu, an island rather larger than Raratonga, which has
no resident missionary, save a very conceited and upsetting
young native teacher. The Atiuans were of old a wilder
and fiercer race than even the Mangaians, and such deter-
mined cannibals that they used to make raids on the
surrounding islands for the simple purpose of filling their
cooking ovens, and enjoying a mighty feast. Great war
canoes, laden with gory corpses, have many a time been
drawn up on the very stretch of sand where we landed,
and the grandfathers of the men who greeted us have sung
and danced in fierce exultation to see the fat limbs and
well-fed bodies of their enemies laid in ghastly heaps upon
148 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
the snowy beach, ready for the cooking pits that since
early morning had been glowing with flame in anticipation
of the banquet.
" Meek- faced Atiuans " was the nickname bestowed
upon these islanders, in derision, by those who knew their
wiliness and treachery. There is not much that is meek-
faced about them to-day. They certainly look rougher and
less amiable than any others of the Cook Islanders, and
they are by no means so amiable and easy-going as the
Raratongans, Aitutakians, and people of Mitiaro and
Mauke. However, it cannot be said that they are in
any way dangerous, and the stray white people who have
lived in the island (there was only one at the time of my
visit) have always got on well with them. Rough, as I
said before, they certainly are. A ring I wore on my
hand attracted the attention of one or two of the men,
and they crowded round, fingered it, and actually tried to
snatch an attempt very shortly put an end to by the
Commissioner, who ordered them off peremptorily. The
incident, although small, illustrates a standard of manners
that one would certainly not encounter in any other part
of the group, or indeed in any one of the Southern or
Eastern Pacific groups that I afterwards saw.
There was a good deal of native-manufactured lime-
juice to be got away here, and the people (most of them
more completely dressed than the party that had received us
on the shore) were busy rolling down the casks into the
water, where the out-going tide took them, and floated
them across the reef to the schooner. It seemed a strange
way of taking on cargo, but I learned, afterwards, that
it is not uncommon in islands surrounded by a dangerous
reef.
The walk up to the settlement proved to be a good
three miles, Atiu being one of the very few islands whose
natives do not live down on the shore. The scenery was
fine wide rich plains covered with low scrub, or clothed
with thick herbage, alternating with heavy' forest. There
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 149
is no better soil in the islands than that of Atiu. Guavas
are a common weed ; pumpkins run wild, trailing their
long green vines and heavy fruit right across the track,
mangoes, chestnuts, Pacific cherries, and other fruits,
grow without care or cultivation. Any tropical product
can be raised, and land is exceedingly cheap. The reef has
always been a handicap to the island ; but I heard that a
part had been blown up to admit of a boat passage, some
time after my visit, also that the Union steamers had
begun to call for cargoes an important event in the history
of any island, and one likely to do much for its future.
The people are few in number only nine hundred
and do not attempt to use more than a very small portion
of the thirty- two square miles of their territory. Much is
available for letting, and every inch of the island is worth
cultivating, although to a stranger's eye it is hardly as
fertile in appearance as other portions of the Cook Group
that are much less valuable. Coffee, copra, oranges,
bananas, sweet potatoes, could be profitably grown for
export. The climate is good and healthy.
The people have not dwindled down to their present small
numbers through natural decay. Like another more
famous island, Atiu is " swarming with absentees." In
the Society Islands, and here and there in other groups,
whole villages full of Atiuans are to-day to be seen, who
emigrated from their native country twenty or thirty
years ago, owing to difficulties with the missionaries, and
went to seek an asylum in lands where strings were drawn
somewhat less tightly than they were at home. They
never returned, though the island, when I saw it, had no
resident white missionary at all, and in consequence
their lands have lain idle ever since. The ill wind has
blown good to planters and settlers, however, so one
need not quarrel with it.
Like Mangaia, Atiu has a cave only a much larger^
one, and it has a mystery connected with the cave, which
no one has yet attempted to solve.
150 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Sixty years ago or more (I was told I do not swear
to the truth of this or any other island story that I have
not had the opportunity of investigating in person), an
invading tribe came to Atiu, and in the course of several
battles, defeated and put to rout one of the lesser tribes
of the island. The vanquished ones, fearing that they
would be killed and eaten, plucked up courage to try a
desperate expedient, and hid themselves in the cave, into
whose dark recesses no native had ever before ventured,
for fear of offending the evil spirits that were said to live
therein. After waiting for a day or two, the enemies
gave up the contest, and went away again. It was now
safe for the hunted tribe to come forth, and the other
inhabitants of the island looked to see them return
for after all, it did not seem likely that the evil spirits
would destroy so many. They waited in vain. From the
unknown depths of the cave unknown, in its innermost
recesses, to the present day no sign, no message reached
them ; no li ving soul ever came forth of the many men,
women, and children who had braved the dangers of that
dark portal. Lost they were, lost they remained.
What happened to them ? No one knows. It is not
easy to destroy a whole tribe, and leave no sign. But the
one white man who partly explored the cave some years
ago, found nothing to hint at the nature of the tragedy.
It is true that his candles gave out, and the cord that
served him for a guide back among the endless windings
of the place came to an end, so that he never knew quite
how far the place went, or how many ramifications it had.
Still, it is strange enough that not so much as a single
human bone was to be seen. If the tribe had lost their
way, and perished of hunger, some traces would certainly
have been visible a spear, a shell ornament, perhaps a
skeleton. If they had fallen in a body over some
treacherous inner precipice, the dangerous place would
have been discoverable. Perhaps some new explorer will
unravel the mystery, one of these days. It will not be a
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 151
steamer passenger, however, for the Union boats on their
rare calls do not stay long enough for any one to land,
arid the cave requires two clear days to reach and see.
As we were not even stopping overnight ourselves, I
had no opportunity of making an exploration on my own
account. Thus the mystery rests unsolved unless some
one may have come to the island in a stray trading schooner
since my visit, and found time enough to explore the
unknown parts of the haunted cavern. The natives of
Atiu, needless to say, put down the whole thing simply and
solely to the revenge of the " local demons."
The people of the settlement, when we reached it,
greeted our party with boisterous cheerfulness. The
officials went to hold their court, as usual, and I, being as
usual quite uninterested in the details of native boundary
disputes conducted in an unknown tongue, amused myself
with the women of the village. It might be more correct
to say that they amused themselves with me. J do not
think any white woman had been up to the settlement
before I visited it, and the curiosity of the girls was un-
controllable. They crowded round me, they slyly felt
my hair to see if the coils were attached to my head in
Nature's own way (by which I conclude that the wearing
of false hair is not unknown to themselves), they rubbed
my dress material in their fingers, they poked me all over
to see if I was real, and conducted such searching investi-
gations into the quantity and style of my clothing,
that I was obliged to speak to one or two as sharply as
I knew how (the tongue was alien, but the tone was under-
stood) and make them desist. Withal, they were not
ill-natured, though certainly a little ill-mannered. They did
not forget the duties of hospitality, but pressed fruit and
cocoanut water on me, and one woman insisted on giving
me a bottle full of honey to take away a gift that was
much appreciated by my fellow-passengers on the schooner,
later on.
I gratified them extremely by loosening the hair of one or
152 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
two, and putting it up in the latest fashionable style, which
proved so popular that the whole feminine half of the
island set to hair-dressing at once, and before I left the
island that day, a general and- complete revolution in
coiffure had taken place. We had a good deal of feminine
talk among ourselves, before the men came out again :
the fact that I did not know anything of the language,
save perhaps half a dozen words, was no bar to a certain
amount of thought-interchange. How was it done ?
Signs, for the most part : scraps, guesses, hints, stray
native words made to do double and treble duty. Could
I have talked to the husbands and brothers of the women
in the same way ? No, certainly not. All through my
wanderings among the uncivilised folk of the island world,
I was constantly interested and amused to see how quick
the women were in the language of signs and makeshifts,
how very uncomprehending the men. If I wanted to
make a request of any kind, on an island where I did not
know any of the language, I instinctively sought for a
woman to interpret my signs for a boat, a guide, a trader's
or missionary's house, and so forth ; and found that the
women understood, almost as surely as the men, under
the same circumstances, did not. Psychologists may
make what they like of the fact. Women, who have
talked the " sign- language " to each other, many and
many a time, over the innocent thick heads of their un-
suspecting better- halves, friends, or brothers, will never
doubt it. We are not as clever as men let the equality
brigade shriek if they like, " it's as true as turnips is, as
true as taxes " but neither are we as stupid. God forbid !
I had practically the whole day to put in somehow, so,
after the delights of hair-dressing had palled, and the
afternoon was passing on, I accepted the invitation of a
cheerful, though rather rough-looking pair of girls, whom
I found crushing limes for lime juice in a very primitive
sort of hand press, and followed them in to dinner in one
of the native houses.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 153
There was a distinguished guest to be entertained
a woman of Atiu who had been away from the island
with her husband for many months, and had now returned
in the Duchess, quite civilised and chic and modern, with
the up-to-dateness of far-away Auckland. This celebrity,
regarded as a very Isabella Bird among the island women,
scarce any of whom had ever seen the other side of their
own reef, was seated on the mats when I entered, her legs
folded under her, native fashion ; not without evident
discomfort, for the heels of very high-heeled, pointed
boots are painful under such circumstances, and corsets
laced to bursting point are absolutely deadly. Ritia's
dark face was ominously empurpled, and perspiration due
as much to agony as to the heat (which was undeniable)
streamed over her forehead and down her nose, from
under the brim of her incredible picture hat. But pride
upheld her, for who among the other women of the island
owned such magnificent clothes ?
The people of the house received me with exultation.
Now, the feast was indeed a gorgeous one, and the sea-
green envy sure to be the lot of every housewife in settle-
ment with whom I had not dined, shed additional lustre
on the triumph. The food was just coming in as I entered
and folded myself up on the mats roast sucking-pig,
smelling very good ; a fat boiled fowl ; some fish from the
lagoon, baked like the pig in a ground oven, and done to
a turn ; arrowroot jelly ; young green cocoanuts, with
the meat still unset, clinging to the thin shell like trans-
parent blanc-mange ; breadfruit, smoking and floury ;
baked pumpkins ; bananas, roasted in their skins ; sweet
potatoes ; chestnuts. A large cocoanut, picked at the
right stage for drinking, stood at each guest's right hand,
and in the middle was a big bowl of milky cocoanut cream,
into which each guest was supposed to dip his food as he ate.
Plates there were none, but I have never thought clean,
fresh, green leaves, a foot or two across, unpleasant substi-
tutes for delf or china, which is handled and used by
154 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
hundreds of eaters, and must be washed in greasy hot
water at the end of every meal. There is a good deal to
be said for the native custom, whether the point of view
be that of convenience, cleanliness, or simple beauty.
I, as the principal guest, was offered everything first,
which obviated any unpleasantness that might have arisen
from the entire absence of knives and forks. There is
no hardship in eating with your fingers, if yours are the
first to plunge into every dish, and you have your nice fresh
leaf to yourself. The little pig I did not touch, because
no one who has lived as much as a week in the islands will
venture on native pork, good as it looks and smells. When
an unfortunate beast is killed by strangulation, and never
bled, and when you know that it has lived at its gipsy will,
and fed more abominably than a land-crab, you are apt
to find you are " not hungry " when its crackling little
carcase comes to table in cerements of green leaves, and
you ask for the breadfruit and the fish instead.
The feast seemed likely to go on all afternoon, since
no native thinks he has eaten enough, on such an occa-
sion, until he is as gorged and as comatose as a stuffed
anaconda. There is no obligation to stay longer than one
likes, however, so I washed my hands and withdrew, as
soon as it seemed good to me to do so.
And by the way, if we of the civilised countries think
that we invented fingerbowls, either in form, or in use, we
are mistaken. The South Seas invented them, a few
hundred years before we found out they were necessary to
our own delicate refinement. A bowl full of water is
handed round to every diner in a South Sea house. The
water is from the river, pure and fresh ; the bowl is of a
mould more perfect than the most exquisite models of
ancient Greece, delicately hued with pale brown in the
inner part, and deep sienna brown outside. It is half a
cocoanut shell beautiful, useful, practically unbreakable,
yet not of sufficient worth to prevent its being thrown
away to-morrow and replaced by a fresh one from the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 155
nearest palm. Fresh plates and cups for one's food are
a refinement that our refined civilisation has not attained
to yet. You must go to savages to look for them.
I thanked my hosts for their entertainment, in good
English, when I left. They understood the words and
tone almost as clearly as if I had spoken in their own
language, and gave me a ringing salutation that followed
me down the road. That a number of Atiuan men, coming
up from the shore, burst out laughing when they saw me,
and held on to each other in convulsions of merriment
at the sight of my absurd white face and ridiculous clothes,
did not detract from the real kindliness of the reception
the island had given me. The manners of the Atiuan
would certainly throw a Tahitian or a courtly Samoan into
a fit ; but for all that, he is not at bottom a bad sort, and
could certainly be made something of with training.
One of the Arikas of Atiu a woman again : there
seemed to be very few male chiefs in the islands was
pointed out to me as I went down to the shore, and I
photographed her sitting in her chair. She looked dignified,
and her long descent was visible in the pose of her small head,
and the delicacy of her hands, but she did not possess
much claim to beauty.
The Duchess was standing off and on outside the reef
when I came out on the beach again, and the barrels were
merrily floating out, rolled down into the water by the
hands of bus.y brown men and women. It was a pretty
scene in the low yellow sunlight of the waning afternoon,
and I carried it away with me, long after we had sailed,
as a pleasant recollection of Atiu.
CHAPTER IX
Islands and Adventures What about the Missionary ? The
Lotus Eaters How to hunt the Robber-Crab The Ship
that would not sail Proper Place of a Passenger One Way
to get wrecked The Pirate and the Pearls.
MAUKE, Manuwai, and Takutea still remained to
be seen, before the Duchess could spread her
wings for Raratonga again. We sailed from one to another
in the course of a few days. There was no hurry, and a
day wasted here or there troubled none of us.
Sometimes the " trades," which are very fickle about
here, came up and caught our towering canvas in a cool
embrace ; then the great hollows of the sails hummed
with the music that the ocean wanderer loves, and the
Duchess skimmed the rolling blue hills like a flying-fish.
Sometimes the wind fell, and the booms swung and creaked
lazily above the burning deck ; then we trolled for albacore
and bonito, shrieking with savage joy when our bit of
long-desired fresh food came flapping and fighting over
the rail ; or we watched the crew hook devil-faced grey
sharks, which, " took charge " of the deck when captured,
hitting terrible blows with their tails, and snapping stout
ropes with their savage teeth ; or we got out boats, and
rowed them for miles between the double furnaces of the
blazing sun and the glowing sea, coming back to the ship
scorched into cinders, stiff with exertion, but happy. At
night the Southern Cross burned white in the velvet sky,
and the coral rocks about the lagoons showed in shimmering
pale blue underneath fifty feet or more of clear, moonlit
water. Lying on the poop, like seals on sand, the little
knot of passengers, captain, and mate, " yarned " for
hour after hour strange, wild tales of frontier life in new
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 157
lands ; of adventures in unknown seas ; of fights, and
more fights, and fights yet again literature in the rough,
a very gallery of vivid pictures wasted unseen . . . and
yet, what should any man who had the rich reality care
about its pale shadow, Story ? " Do you care much for
reading ? " " Well, no," answers the bare-footed officer
lying with his head in a coil of rope ; " books aren't very
interesting, are they ? "
I, watching the mizzen truck swing among the stars,
look back over the long, long trail long both in distance
and in time that separates this small heaving deck in the
midst of the tropic seas from the rush of the wintry Strand.
Nights in islands of ill reputation, when I slept with " one
eye open " and one hand within touch of my revolver (for
there are incidents of my wanderings that I have not told,
and only those who know the Eastern Pacific may guess
at them) ; days when only a fifty-to-one chance kept the
little schooner from piling her bones on a spouting coral
reef in mid-ocean rough fare, hard lodging, and long
fatigue, sometimes, all to be " eaten as helped," without
comment or complaint, for that is the rule of island life
the pungent taste of danger, now and then, gratefully slaking
some deep, half-conscious thirst derived from fiercer
centuries ; the sight of many lands and many peoples
these, and other pictures, painted themselves among
the little gold stars swept by the rocking masts, as I lay^
remembering. I thought of the pile of untouched
" shockers " in my cabin ; of grey London and its pyramids
of books and armies of writers ; of the mirror that they
hold up to life, and the " magic web of colours gay " they
weave, always looking, like the Lady of Shalott, in the
mirror, and seldom joining the merry rout outside, where no
one cares a pin for coloured tapestries, and looking-glasses
are left to half-grown girls. No, truly ; " books are
not interesting," when you can have life instead.
Upon which some one proposed " Consequences " in
the cabin, and I made haste to climb down.
158 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Another day, gold and blue as are almost all the days
of the " winter " season, and another island, burning white
and blazing green, and another tumbling reef to jump, with
the help of a powerful boat-holder, who stands in the midst
of the surf, and drags the dinghy forward at the right
moment. This is Mauke : we are getting on with the
group, and begin to realise that some time or other, even
in these timeless regions, will actually see us back at
Raratonga.
Mauke proves to be a pretty little place, some six miles
in circumference, " low " in type, but park-like and garden-
like and dainty enough to wake covetous desires in the
heart of almost any traveller. It has the finest oranges
in the group growing completely wild and we are
greeted on the shore by the usual crowd of flower-wreathed
natives, bearing splendid branches of rich yellow fruit,
which they present to every one with eager generosity.
There are only three hundred and seventy natives in the
island, and much of the land lies waste, though it is ex-
ceedingly fertile. The Mauke folk take things easy on
the whole, and are not keen on trading. They export
some oranges, some copra, a few bunches of dried bananas,
and they buy a fair amount of cotton cloth, and shirts,
and cutlery, from the white trader's store. But no one,
so far, has grown fat on what Mauke makes or buys.
There were, at the time of my visit, only one or two .
whites in the place. The greater portion of the . land
available for planting lay unused. Probable rents, on
long leases, were quoted to me as a shilling or so an acre.
The call at Mauke was short, and I saw little of the
island. The natives insisted, however, that I should come
up to the village and look at their church, of which they
are very proud, so I headed the inevitable procession
through the orange and lime and guava groves, to the little
group of houses, partly thatch and reed, partly white-
washed concrete, that made up the settlement. The
church was, of course, much the least interesting thing
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 159
in the island. South Sea churches, with one or two happy
exceptions, are blots in a world of beauty, monuments of
bad taste, extravagance, and folly, that do very little
credit to the religions they represent. In the days when
most of them were built, the one idea of the missionary
was the assimilation of the native to white men's ways
and customs, as far as was possible, by any means con-
ceivable wise, or otherwise. In building churches for
the new converts, the pattern followed was that set by
Europeans for use in a cold climate, on sites that had a
distinct money value per yard. Consequently, while
South Sea houses, for coolness, are made almost all window
and door, or else built, native fashion, in such a way that
the air blows through the walls, South Sea churches are
almost without ventilation, and (because the style of
architecture selected is that of the whitewashed barn
description) quite without beauty of any kind. In most
cases, they have cost the islands appalling sums to build,
and continue to de.mand a good deal to keep them in
repair. There are happy exceptions here and there.
Niue, of which place I have more to say later on, possesses
a church built with exquisite taste and perfect regard to
convenience, and the Catholic cathedral in Samoa is
designed with much consideration as to climate, and ap-
pearance as well.
Mauke's church, however, is not one of the exceptions,
being exceedingly bald and ugly, and it is furthermore
disfigured by the most horrible lapse of taste to be seen
in almost any island church the decoration of the pulpit
and communion rails with silver dollars nailed on in rows.
I told the crowd of natives, eager to hear the praises of
their wonderful church, that I had never seen anything
like it in my life which seemed to afford them much
gratification. I did not add what I thought that I sin-
cerely hoped I might never see anything like it again.
A statement made only once or twice is fairly sure to
miss the observation of the average reader, so I make no
160 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
apology for saying here, as I have said in other parts
of this book, that I am not one of those people who are
opposed to mission work, or indifferent to religion ; neither
am I inclined to minimise the effects of the work done by
missionaries in converting and civilising the Pacific
generally. That the missionaries are infallible and always
wise, however, in their methods of dealing with the natives,
I do deny which is only equivalent to saying that they
are human, like the people at home. Nor do I think that, in
these days, the missionary who takes up work in the
Southern and Eastern Pacific has any need to wear the
martyr aureole which is so persistently fitted on to the
heads of all who go to " labour " in the island world. We
are not in the days of Cook : cannibalism, over most of
the Pacific, is dead and forgotten, violence to white people
of any kind is unheard of, the climates are usually ex-
cellent, the islands beautiful, fertile, and happy, and the
missionary's work is much the same as that of any country
clergyman at home, save for the fact that his congregation
are infinitely more submissive than whites would be, and
incline to regard their teacher as a sovereign, not only
spiritual, but temporal. The mission house is always
much the finest building on the island, and the best
furnished and provided. The missionary's children are
usually sent away to be educated at good home or colonial
boarding schools, and afterwards return to take up their
parents' work, or possibly to settle in the islands in other
capacities. The life, though busy, is devoid of all stress
and strain, and there is no apparent difficulty in " making
both ends meet " and overlap. In the Southern and
Eastern Pacific, the missionaries are conveyed from group
to group in a mission steamer that is little inferior to the
yacht of a millionaire, for comfort and elegance. They
are constantly assisted by gifts of all kinds, and treated
with consideration wherever they go, and in most cases
enjoy a social position much better than that originally
possessed at home. It is hard to see why a profession,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 161
which is so pleasant and profitable, should be exalted
over the work of thousands of struggling pastors and
clergymen at home, who too often know the pinch of
actual want, and are in many cases obliged to lead lives
of the greyest and narrowest monotony.
What is the moral ? That one should not give money
to missions ? Certainly not. But if I were a millionaire,
and had thousands to give in such a cause, I would give
them carefully, with inquiry, directed to more sources
than one, and would distribute them so that they should
be used, if possible, in adding to the numbers of the
Christian Church, rather than in teaching geography and
English grammar and dressmaking to amiable brown people
who are, and have been for generations, a good deal more
Christian than ninety in a hundred whites. I believe
firmly that most of the older missions in the Pacific could
be continued perfectly well with the aid of native teachers,
at one-twentieth the present cost much as the teaching
of outlying far-away islands, where residence is unpleasant
for white families, is carried on to-day, with the aid of a
yearly visit or so. That the present system will ever be
modified, however, I do not believe. The reasons for
such a conclusion are too obvious to need discussion.
I have wandered a good way from the church at Mauke.
But there are many points on this subject of island
missions, nevertheless, on which I have not touched.
Some of the men of Mauke were very busy on the shore,
when our party passed down again to the boat. They made
a bright picture, in their gay pareos of scarlet and yellow,
and the snowy coronets of scented island flowers that they
had twined about their heads. But the most picturesque
thing about them was their occupation, which was neither
more nor less than sand-castle building ! There they sat,
those big grown men, with never a child among them to
make excuse for their play, building up churches and
houses of the milk-white coral sand, scooping dark windows
in the edifices, training green creepers up them, and
6
planting out odd little gardens of branching coral twigs
off the reef, in the surrounding pleasances. They had
bundles of good things tied up in green leaves, lying
somewhere in the shade of the guava bushes, and they
had brought a pile of husked cocoanuts down to the shore
with them, to drink when they pleased. They may have
been waiting for a native boat, or they may have been
simply making a day of it. In any case, they were
sublimely happy.
(Cold rain on the miry road ; faint gold sunset fading to
stormy grey ; wet leaves a-shiver in the dusk and the long,
long way before the tired feet. A day of toil, a comfortless
night. A handful of coppers in the pocket ; food and fire
that must be bought with silver ; freedom, rest, enjoyment,
that cost unattainable gold. The sacred right of labour ;
a white man's freedom. O, brown half-naked islanders,
playing at sand-castles on your sun-bathed shore, with un-
bought food lying among the unpurchased fruits beside you,
what would you give to be one of the master race ?)
Takutea we did not call at, since it was uninhabited,
but the Duchess, under her daring little pirate of a captain,
made no bones about running as close to anything, any-
where, as her passengers might desire, so we saw the
fascinating place at fairly close quarters. In 1904, when
I saw it, it was a real " desolate island," being twelve
miles out in the open sea from the nearest land (Atiu),
and totally uninhabited. Its extent is four or five hundred
acres ; it is thickly wooded with cocoanuts; and has a good
spring of water. The beautiful " bo'sun bird," whose
long red and white tail feathers have a considerable commer-
cial value, is common on the island. No one had visited
it for a long time when we sailed by ; the wide white
beach was empty, the cocoanut palms dropped their nuts
unheeded into earth that received them gladly, and set
them forth again in fountain-like sprays of green. The
surf crumbled softly on the irregular fringing reef ; the
ripples of the lagoon laid their ridgy footsteps along the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 163
empty strand, and no Man Friday came to trample them
out with a step of awful significance. I wanted Takutea
very badly indeed, all for myself ; but I shall not have it
now, neither will the reader, for some one else has bought
it, and it is to be turned into a cocoanut plantation.
Manuwai, better known as Hervey Island, is not many
miles away, but we took a day or more to reach it, partly
because the winds were contrary, partly because (with
apologies to the Admiralty Surveys) it was wrongly charted,
and could not be found, at first, in a slight sea-fog. Manu-
wai has changed its ownership and its use, of late, but in
1904 it was a penal settlement and a copra plantation
combined, being used as a place of punishment for sinful
Cook Islanders, who were compulsorily let out as labourers
to the Company renting the two islets of which this so-
called group is composed.
The islands between them cover about fifteen hundred
acres, according to the estimate given me. They have
no permanent inhabitants, and when first taken up for
planting, were quite desolate of life. A far-away, melan-
choly little place looked Manuwai, under the rays of the
declining sun, as we came up to the reef. The two low
islands, with their thick pluming of palms, are enclosed
in the same lagoon, sheltered by a reef of oval form.
There were a couple of drying-huts on the beach, and some
heaps of oily smelling copra, when our boat pulled in.
About twenty men, some convicts, some hired labourers,
were gathered on the shore, fairly dancing with excite-
ment, and the rest of the population one white overseer,
and one half-caste were waiting on the very edge of the
water, hardly less agitated. No ships ever called except
the Duchess, and she was long overdue.
I stepped on shore, and was immediately shaken hands
with, and congratulated on being the first white woman to
set foot on the island. Then we all went for a walk, while
the native crew fell into the arms of the labourers, and
with cries of joy began exchanging gossip, tobacco, hats,
6*
164 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
and shirts, bartering oranges from the ship for cocoanut
crabs from the island, and eagerly discussing the question
of who was going home in the Duchess, and who would
have to stop over till her next call, perhaps six months
hence.
Manuwai is not one of the most beautiful of the islands,
but anything in the way of solid ground was welcome
after the gymnastics of the too-lively Duchess. The cocoa-
nut plantations, and the new clearings, where the bush
was being burned away, interested the officials from
Raratonga, and the " boulevard " planted by the over-
seer a handsome double row of palms, composing an
avenue that facetiously began in nothing, and led to
nowhere, received due admiration. We heard a good
deal about the depredations of the cocoanut crabs, and as
these creatures are among the strangest things that ever
furnished food for travellers' tales, I shall give their history
as I gathered it, both in Manuwai and other places.
One must not, by the way, believe all that one hears,
or even half, among the " sunny isles of Eden." Flowers
of the imagination flourish quite as freely as flowers and
fruits of the earth, and are much less satisfactory in kind.
Also, it is a recognised sport to " spin yarns " to a new-
comer, with the pious object of seeing how much he or
she will swallow ; and where so much is strange, bizarre,
and almost incredible, among undoubted facts, it is hard
to sift out the fictions of the playful resident.
However, the cocoanut crab is an undeniable fact, with
which many a planter has had to wrestle, much to his
loss. It must be confessed that I had expected something
very exciting indeed, when I heard in Tahiti that cocoanut
or robber crabs were still to be found in some parts of
the Cook Group. One of the most grisly bugbears of my
youth had been the descriptions of the terrible cocoanut
crab that attacked the " Swiss Family Robinson " on
their wonderful island. It was described, if my memory
serves me, as " about the size of a turtle ." and was dark
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 165
blue in colour ; it descended rapidly backwards down
a tree, and immediately went to the attack of a Robinson
youth, who repulsed it at the peril of his life. . . . Cn
the whole, I thought it would make things interesting,
if it really was in the Cook Group.
I never was more disappointed in my life than when
I really saw one. It was dead, and cured in formalin,
and only brought down from an island house as a show,
but that was not the trouble. It was not more than two
and a half feet long, lobster tail and all ; it was not in the
least like a turtle, and any small boy armed with a good
stick could have faced it without fear, at its worst. No,
decidedly the terrible crab was not up to the travellers' tales
that had been told about it.
Still, it was worth seeing, for it was like nothing on
the earth or in the sea that I had ever encountered. It
had been excellently preserved, and looked wonderfully
alive, when laid on the sand at the foot of a cocoanut
palm. Its colour, as in life, was a gay mixture of red and
blue. It had a long body like a colossal lobster, and two
claws, one slight and thin, the other big enough to crack
the ankle-bone of a man. It was an ugly and a wicked-
looking thing, and I was not surprised to hear that it
fights fiercely, if caught away from its hole, sitting up
and threatening man or beast with its formidable claw,
and showing no fear whatever.
In the daylight, however, it is very seldom seen abroad.
We walked through groves that were riddled with its holes
that afternoon, but never even heard the scuffle of a claw.
The creature lives in rabbit-like burrows at the foot of
palm-trees, and the natives can always tell the size of the
inmate by a glance at the diameter of the hole by which
it enters its burrow. At night it comes out, climbs the
nearest palm, and gets in among the raffle of young and
old leaves, fibre, stalks, and nuts, in the crown, there it
selects a good nut, nips the stalk in two with its claw,
and lets the booty drop with a thump to the earth, seventy
166 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
or eighty feel below. Then the marauder backs cautiously
down the tree, finds the nut, and proceeds to rip and rend
the tough husk until the nut as we know it at home is
laid bare. A cocoanut shell is no easy thing to crack,
as most people know, but the robber crab . with its huge
claws makes nothing more of it than we should make of
an egg, and in a minute the rich oily meat is at the mercy
of the thief, and another fraction of a ton of copra is lost
to the planter. It goes without saying that any stray nuts
lying on the ground have been opened and destroyed,
before the crab will trouble itself to climb.
Cocoanut crab is very good eating, and as it is mostly
found in barren coral islands where little or nothing will
grow but palms, the natives are always keen on hunting
the " robber." Sometimes he is secured by thrusting
a lighted torch down a hole which possesses two exits
the crab hurrying out at the unopposed side as soon as
the flame invades his dwelling. Sometimes the islanders
secure him by the simple process of feeling for him in his
burrow, and stabbing him at the end of it with a knife.
This is decidedly risky, however, and may result in a
smashed hand or wrist for the invader. A favourite plan
is the following : Slip out in the dark, barefoot and silent,
and hide yourself in a cocoanut grove till you see or hear
a crab making his way up a tree. Wait till he is up at the
top, and then climb half-way up, and tie a band of grass
round the trunk. Now hurry down and pile a heap of
rough coral stones from the beach at the foot of the tree.
Slip away into the shadow again, and wait. The crab
will start to come down presently, backing carefully, tail
first, for he has a bare and unprotected end to his armoured
body, and uses it to inform himself of his arrival on the
safe ground below. Half-way down the tree he touches
your cunning band of grass. " Down so soon ? " he
remarks to himself, and lets go. Crack 1 he has shot'down
forty feet through air, and landed smashingly on the pile
of stones that you carefully prepared for his reception.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 167
He is badly injured, ten to one, and you will have little
trouble in finishing him off with your knife, and carrying
home a savoury supper that is well worth the- waiting for.
That is the native way of hunting robber crabs.
When one lives on a cocoanut plantation, on an island
that contains practically nothing else, one comes in time to
know everything that is to be known about cocoanuts
in general. But even the manager of Manuwai could
not solve for me a problem that had been perplexing me
ever since I had first seen a cocoanut palm a problem,
indeed, that after several more years of island travel,
remains unanswered yet.
Why is no one ever killed by a cocoanut ?
The question seems an idle one, if one thinks of cocoa-
nuts as they are seen in British shops small brown ovals
of little weight or size and if one hcs never seen them
growing, or heard them fall. But when one knows that
the smallest nuts alone reach England (since they are sold
by number, not by weight) and that the ordinary nut, in
its husk and on its native tree, is as big as one's own head,
and as heavy as a solid lump of hard wood that most
trees bear seventy or eighty nuts a year, and that every
one of those nuts has the height of a four-storey house to
drop before it reaches the ground that native houses
are usually placed in the middle of a palm grove, and that
every one in the islands, brown or white, walks underneath
hundreds of laden cocoanut trees every day in the year
it then becomes a miracle of the largest kind that no
one is ever killed, and very rarely injured, by the fall of
the nuts. Nor can the reason^be sought in the fact that
the nuts cannot hurt. One is'sure to see them fall from
time to time, and they shoot down from the crown of the
palm like flying bomb-shells, making a most portentous
thump as they reach the earth. So extremely rare are
accidents, however, that in nearly three years I did not
hear of any mishap, past or present, save the single case
of a man who was struck by a falling nut in the Cook
i68 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Islands, and knocked insensible for an hour or two. This
is certainly not a bad record for a tour extending over
so many thousand miles, and including most of the
important island groups every one of which grows
cocoanut palms by the thousand, in some cases, by the
hundred thousand.
Travellers are often a little nervous at first, when riding
or walking all day long through woods of palm, heavily
laden with ponderous nuts. But the feeling never lasts
more than a few days. One does not know why one is
never hit by these cannon-balls of Nature but one never
is, neither is anybody else, so all uneasiness dies out very
quickly, and one acquiesces placidly in the universal
miracle.
Planters say that most of the nuts fall at night, when
the dew has relaxed the fibres of the stalks. This would
be an excellent reason, but for the fact that the nuts
don't fall any more at night than in the daytime, if one
takes the trouble to observe, and that damp, or dew,
tightens up fibres of all kind, instead of relaxing them.
If one asks the natives, the usual answer is : "It just
happens that way " ; and I fancy that is as near as any
one is likely to get to a solution.
Manuwai, since I saw it, has been purchased outright
by a couple of adventurous young Englishmen, who are
working it as a copra plantation. Takutea has, therefore,
a neighbour in the Robinson Crusoe business, and is not
likely to be quite so solitary as in times past.
The tour of the group was now ended, and the Govern-
ment officials were conveyed back to Raratonga with all
possible despatch which is not saying very much, after
all. There followed a luxurious interval of real beds and
real meals, and similar Capuan delights, in the pretty island
bungalow where my lot for the time had been cast. Then
the Duchess began to start again, and peace was over.
A sailing vessel does not Start in the same way as a steamer.
She gives out that she will leave on such a day, at such
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 169
an hour, quite like the steamer ; but there the resemblance
ends. When you pack your cabin trunk, and have it
taken down at u a.m., you find there is no wind, so you
take it back and call again next day. There is a wind
now, but from the one quarter that makes it practically
impossible to get out of port. You are told you had
better leave your trunk, in case of the breeze shifting.
You do, and go back for the second time to the hostess
from whom you have already parted twice. The verandah
(every one lives on verandahs, in the islands) is convulsed
to see you come back, and tells you this is the way the
ship always does " get off." You spend a quiet evening,
and go to bed. At twelve o'clock, just as you are in the
very heart of your soundest sleep, a native boy comes
running up to the house to say that the captain has sent
for the passenger to come down at once, for the wind is
getting up, and he will sail in a quarter of an hour ! You
scramble into your clothes, run down to the quay, get
rowed out to the ship, and finish your sleep in your cabin
to the accompaniment of stamping feet and the flapping
sails ; and behold, at eight o'clock, the bo'sun thunders
on your door, and tells you that breakfast is in, but the
breeze is away again, and the ship still in harbour ! After
breakfast you sneak up the well-known avenue again,
feeling very much as if you had run away from school,
and were coming back in disgrace. This time, the verandah
shrieks until the natives run to the avenue gate to see
what is the matter with the man " papalangis," and then
console you with the prophecy that the schooner won't
get away for another week.
.She does, though. In the middle of the afternoon tea,
the captain himself arrives, declines to have a cup, and
says it is really business this time, and he is away. You
go down that eternal avenue again, followed by cheerful
cries of " No goodbye ! we'll keep your place at dinner,"
and in half an hour the green and purple hills of lovely
Raratonga are separated from you by a widening plain of
170 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
wind-ruffled blue waves, and the Duchess is fairly away to
Savage Island.
" Miss G , have you nearly done your book ? "
" Pretty nearly why ? " I ask, looking up irom the
pages of " John Herring."
We are a day or two out from Raratonga, but not even
one hundred of the six hundred miles that lie between
the Cook Group and lonely Niue is compassed as yet. The
winds have been lightest of the light, and from the wrong
quarter too, until this morning, when we have " got a
slant " at last. Now the Duchess is rolling along in her
usual tipsy fashion at seven or eight knots an hour, and
the china-blue sea is ruffled and frilled with snow. It is
hot, but not oppressively so, and I have been enjoying
myself most of the morning lounging on a pile of locker
cushions against the deck-house, alternately reading,
and humming to myself something from Kipling about :
Sailing south on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
Sliding south on the long trail, the trail that is always new.
The pirate captain has been at the wheel for the last
two hours, but I have not taken much note of the fact.
Our only mate left us in the Cook Group, for a reason
not absolutely new in the history of the world (a pretty
little reason she was, too) ; and our bo'sun, who has been
giddily promoted to a rank that he describes as " chief
officer," is not exactly a host in himself, though he is a
white man. In consequence, the pirate and he have been
keeping watch and watch since we sailed four hours on
and four hours off and, as one or two of our best A.B.s
declined to go down to Niue, and most of the others are
bad helmsmen, the two whites have been at the wheel
during the greater part of then- watches.
I have grown quite accustomed to seeing one or other
standing aft of the little companion that leads down to
the cabin, lightly shifting the spokes in his hands hour
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 171
after hour. It never occurred to me, however, that I
was personally interested in the matter.
But we are in the South Pacific, and I have still a good
many things to find out about the " way they do things
at sea," here where the ocean is the ocean, and no play-
ground for globe-trotting tourists.
"Are you nearly done?" asks the pirate again,
shifting half a point, and throwing a glance at the clouds
on the windward side. They are harmless little clouds,
and only suggest a steady breeze.
" I have about half an hour's reading left," I answer.
" Then you'd better chuck the book into your cabin,
for it's almost eight bells, and that begins your trick
at the wheel," says the pirate calmly.
" My what ? "
" Your trick. Your turn. Time you have to steer,
see ? "
" But, good heavens ! I never had a wheel in my hand
in my life I don't know how ! "
" That's your misfortune, not your fault," says the
pirate kindly. " You'll never have to say that again.
There's eight bells now come along. J and I have
had too much of the wheel, and now we're well away from
land is your time to learn."
And from thenceforth until we made the rocky coast
of Niue, more than a week later, I spent a portion of every
day with the polished spokes of the wheel in my hands,
straining my eyes on the " lubber's point," or anxiously
watching the swelling curves of the sails aloft in the windy
blue, ready to put the wheel up the instant an ominous
wrinkle began to flap and writhe upon the marble smooth-
ness of the leaning canvas. At night, the smallest slatting
of sail upon the mast would start me out of my sleep, with
an uneasy fear that I was steering, and had let her get too
close to the wind ; and I deposed most of my prayers in
favour of an evening litany that began : " North, north
by east, nor'-nor'-east, nor'-east by north, nor'-east," and
172 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
turned round upon itself to go backward in the end, like
a spell said upside down to raise a storm.
Withal, the good ship left many a wake that would
have broken the back of a snake, for the first day or two
of my lessons, and the native A.B.s used to come and
stand behind me when an occasional sea made the wheel
kick, under the evident impression that they would be
wanted before long. But I learned to steer somehow
before we got to Niue, and I learned to lower away boats,
and to manage a sixteen foot steer-oar, when we got be-
calmed, and spent the day rowing about among the moun-
tainous swells, out of sheer boredom. And for exercise
and sport, I learned to go up into the cross-trees and come
down again by the ratlines or the back-stay, whichever
seemed the handiest, wearing the flannel gymnasium dress
I had brought for mountaineering excursions. It was
very pleasant up there on a bright, salt-windy morning,
when the Duchess swung steadily on her way with a light
favouring breeze, her little white deck lying below me
like a tea-tray covered with walking dolls, her masts at
times leaning to leeward until my airy seat was swung far
out across the water. Having a good head, I was never
troubled with giddiness, and used to do a good deal of
photographing from aloft, when the ship was steady enough
to allow of it. That was seldom, however, for the Duchess
had been built in New Zealand, where the good schooners
do not come from, and had no more hold on the water than
a floating egg. More than one sailing vessel turned out
by the same builders had vanished off the face of the
ocean, in ways not explained, by reason of the absence
of survivors, but dimly guessed at, all the same ; and I
cannot allow that the pirate captain had any just cause of
annoyance even allowing for a master's pride in his ship
when I recommended him to have the schooner's name
painted legibly on her keel before he should leave Auckland
on his next northward journey, just " in case."
We were about a hundred and fifty miles off Niue,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 173
when the pirate came to me one windy morning, and asked
me if I wanted to see something that had only been once
seen before.
There was, of course, only one reply possible.
" Then keep a look-out, and you'll see it," said the
pirate. " We're going to run right by Be ve ridge Reef, and
it's been only once sighted. What's more, it's wrong
charted, and I'm going to set it right. You've no idea
what a lot of wrecks there have been on that d that
dangerous place. Not a soul ever got away from one of
them to tell what happened, either. They'd only know
when things began drifting down to Niue, weeks after
timber and cargo, and so on why, a lot of the houses
in Niue are built out of wreckage and then people would
say that there'd been another wreck on Beveridge Reef.
Some fool reported it as a coral island two miles across,
once upon a time, but I'll bet he never saw it. If it had
been, it wouldn't have been as destructive as it is."
Late in the day we sigh-ted it. The pirate was aloft,
swinging between heaven and earth, with a glass in his
hand, calling out observations to the chief -officer-boat-
swain below. The crew were attending exclusively to
the horizon, and letting the ship look after herself, according
to the amiable way of Maories when there is anything
interesting afoot. The weather was darkening down,
and heavy squalls of rain swept the sea now and then.
But there it was, clearly enough to be seen in the intervals
of the squalls, a circle of white foam enclosing an inner
patch of livid green, clearly marked off from the grey of the
surrounding ocean. Here and there a small black tooth
of rock projected from the deadly ring of surf, and sig-
nificant and cruel sight two ships' anchors were plainly to
be seen through the glass, as we neared the reef, lying
fixed among the rock, so low in the water as only to be visible
at intervals.
" A wicked place," said the captain, who had come
down from his eyrie, and was giving orders for the prepara-
174 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
tion of a boat. " Couldn't see a bit of it at night couldn't
see it in broad daylight, if there was a big sea on. And
wrong charted too. Think of the last minutes of those
poor chaps the anchors belonged to ! "
The sea and sky were really beginning to look nasty,
and I did not want to think of it. But the pirate went
discoursing pleasantly of deaths and wrecks, while the
men were putting various things into the whaleboat, and
getting ready to lower away. He did not often have a
passenger, but when he did, he evidently thought it his
duty to keep her entertained.
We were very near to the reef now so close that I
was able to take a photograph of it, a little marred by the
rainy weather. Meantime, the boat was being swung out,
and the men were getting in. And now " a strange thing
happened." Out of nowhere at all eight sharks appeared
large ones, too and began to cruise hungrily about the
Duchess's hull, their lithe yellowish bodies sharply out-
lined in the dark blue water, their evil eyes fixed on me, as
I overhung the rail to look at them. " If only ! " they
said as plainly as possible, with those hideously intelligent
green orbs. " If only "
" What has brought those horrible brutes about us ? "
I asked.
" Those ? oh, they're waiting to be fed, I suppose. Pretty
much all the ships that came this way before us have
given them a good dinner. I bet they say grace before
meat now every time they see a sail, which isn't often.
Here, you Oki, put in that keg of beef."
" Where are you going ? " I demanded with consider-
able interest, for the pirate captain never did things like
any one else, and I scented an adventure.
" Going to find out what the inside of that lagoon is
really like. No one ever put a boat into it yet. No,
you can't be in it this time : very sorry, but "
" What ? "
" Well, you see, one isn't absolutely sure of getting back
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 175
again, in a place like this. Didn't you see me put in grub
and water and a compass ? I don't think you'd like a
boat voyage down to Niue, if we happened to miss the
train. The mate has the course, and could take her on,
if I came to grief. No, it isn't any use asking, 1 just can't.
Lower away."
They lowered and
Well, if the pirate had been a shade less determined
about the number in the boat, there would have been a
pretty little tragedy of the sea, that gusty afternoon.
One more in the boat had certainly turned the scale. For
the wind was continually getting up, and the wretched
Duchess was rolling like a buoy, and the boat as she
touched the water, with the captain and three men in her,
was caught by the top of a wave, and dashed against the
side of the ship. In a flash she was overturned, with a
badly damaged thwart, and was washing about helplessly
among the waves, with the four men clinging to her keel.
The sea took her past the schooner like a rag. I had only
time to run to the stern, before she was swept out of
hearing, but I heard the pirate call as he disappeared in
the trough of a wave, " Get out your camera, here's the
chance of your life ! " Then the boat was gone, and for
a moment the mate and I thought it was all over. " The
sharks will have 'em if they don't sink! " declared that
officer, straining over the rail, while the Maori crew ran
aimlessly about the deck, shouting with excitement.
What happened during the next half-hour has never
been very clear in my memory. The wind kept rising,
and the afternoon grew late and dark. The overturned
boat, with the four heads visible about her keel, drifted help-
lessly in the trough of the seas, at the mercy of waves and
sharks. (I heard, afterwards, that the men had all kicked
ceaselessly to keep them away, and that they expected *
to be seized any moment.) The wind screamed in the
rigging, and drifts of foam flew up on deck, and the Maories
ran about and shouted, and got in each other's way, and
176 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
tried to heave ropes, and missed, and tried to launch a,
boat under the mate's direction, and somehow did not
I cannot tell why. And right in the middle of the play,
when we seemed to be making some attempt to bear down
upon the drifting wreck, a grey old man who had come on
with us from the Cook Islands, but had kept to his berth
through illness most of the time, burst out on deck with
an astonishing explosion of sea language, and told us that
we were nearly on to the reef. Which, it seems, every one
had forgotten !
After that, things grew so lively on the poop tliat\I
got up on the top of the deck-house to keep out of the
way, and reflect upon my sins. It seemed a suitable
occasion for devotional exercises. The white teeth of the
reef were unpleasantly near, the water was growing shoal.
" Put a leadsman in the chains this minute ! " yelled the
grizzled passenger (who had been at sea in his time, and
knew something of what was likely to happen when you
got a nasty reef on your lee side, with the wind working
up). The auxiliary engine, meant for use on just such
occasions, had been sick for some time. There was a
very strong tide running, the wind had shifted while the
ship's company were intent on the fate of the boat, and on
the whole it looked very much as if the decorations already
possessed by the notorious reef were likely to be increased
by another pair of best quality British made anchors
ours.
A good many things happen on sailing ships Pacific ships
especially that one does not describe in detail, unless
one happens to be writing fiction. This is not fiction,
so the occurrences of the next quarter of an hour must be
passed over lightly. The ancient passenger took com-
mand of the ship. We got away from the reef by an un-
pleasantly close shave and bore down upon the boat, which
the pirate captain had impossibly contrived to right by
this time, paddling it along with one oar, while the men
billed constantly. We got the captain and the men and
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 177
the damaged boat on board, and a few " free opinions,
freely expressed " as a certain famous lady novelist
would put it were exchanged. Then the pirate, who
was quite fresh, and very lively, demanded the second
boat, and said he was bound to get into that place any-
how, and wouldn't leave till he did.
I rather think we mutinied at this juncture. I am sure
I did, because I had been thinking over my sins for some
time, and had come to the conclusion that there really were
not many of them, and that I wanted a chance to accumulate
a few more, preferably of an agreeable kind, before I faced
the probability of decorating any Pacific coral reef with
my unadorned and unburied skeleton. The grey-haired
passenger and the mate mutinied too, upon my example,
and the pirate, seeing that we were three to one, and more-
over, that it was growing dusk, made a virtue of necessity,
and went off for a shift of clothes, giving orders to make all
sail at once. And so we left the reef in the growing dusk,
and no man has to this day disturbed the virgin surface of
its stormy little lagoon with profanely invading oar.
Was there a fortune lying concealed beneath those
pale green waves within the foaming jaws of the reef ?
I never heard. But there were some among our native
crew who came from the far-off island of Penrhyn, where the
pearl fisheries are, and they were strong in asserting their
belief that the pirate might have been well paid for his
exploration. It was just that sort of reef, said the pearl-
island men, that most often contained good shell, and
produced the biggest pearls, the first time of looking. An
old, undisturbed atoll, where no one had ever thought of
looking for shell, was the place where big pearls got a
chance to grow. The first comer scooped in the prizes ;
afterwards, the shell itself and the smaller pearls were all
that any one was likely to get. \
However that might be, the talk, on the rest of the way
down to Niue, ran much on pearls and pearl-shell, and I
learned a good deal about these gold-mines of the Pacific
178 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
always making allowance for the inevitable Pacific
exaggeration. Any man who can live a year among the
islands, and restrain himself, in the latter part of his stay,
from lying as naturally and freely as he breathes, deserves
a D.S.O.
Stripped of flowers of fiction, the romance of the pearling
trade was still interesting and fascinating enough. Pearls,
in the Pacific, are obtained from a large bivalve that has
a good deal of value in itself, being the material from which
mother-o' -pearl is made. Prices, of course, fluctuate very
much, as the shell is used in so many manufactures that
depend on the vagaries of fashion ; but the value may run
to 200 a ton or over. When it gets down to ^40 or less,
it is hardly worth the expense of lifting and carrying.
For the most part, however, it is worth a good deal more
than this, and when it is at the highest, fortunes can be, and
have been, made out of small beginnings, in a very short
time. The pearls are an " extra," and not to be relied
upon. There may be almost none in a big take of shell,
there may be a lew small ones, there may be a number of
fine ones that will make the fortune of the lucky fisher.
It is all a gamble, and perhaps none the less fascinating
for that. Much of the best shell and the finest pearls
in the Pacific, come from the Paumotus, which are French.
Thursday Island, off the north of Queensland, was the
great centre of the fishery, until lately, but it has been
almost fished out. The Solomons were reported to have
a good deal of shell, and a rush took place to that part
not long ago, but the yield was much exaggerated. There
are a good many atolls about the Central Pacific in general,
which contain more or less shell, and are generally
owned and fished by Australian syndicates. Outlying
reefs and islets, where no one goes, now and then turn out
to be valuable. The news of a find travels apparently on
the wings of the seagulls from group to group, for no such
place ever remains secret for more than a very short time,
and then,, if the owner's title is not secure (a thing that
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 179
may easily happen, in the case of an island that does not '
lie within the geographical limits of any of the annexed
groups) there is sometimes trouble. Pearl-poaching is
easy and profitable, if not very safe ; and who is to tell
ugly tales, a thousand miles from anywhere, out in the
far Pacific ?
(The swift-winged schooner and the racing seas : decks
foam-white beneath a burning sky : salt wind on the lips, and
the fairy-voiced enchantress A dventure singing ever from
beyond the prow ! " dreamers in the man-stifled town,"
do you hear the wide world calling ?)
And so the pirate captain brought us up to Niue, and
left me there, and sailed away with the ship to Auckland,
where he gave over the command, and went (so it was said)
to aid in the instruction of sea-going youth, somewhere
further south. The Cook Islands shrieked with joyous
amusement when they heard of the pirate's new role as
the guide and mentor of tender boyhood but I do not
know, after all. The pirate was as full of mischief as an
egg is full of meat, as full of fight as a* sparrow-hawk,
gifted with an uncanny faculty for plunging into every kind
of risk that the wide seas of the earth could hold, and coming
out unscathed and asking for more. He was assuredly
not to be numbered among the company of the saints, but
neither is the average " glorious human boy " and on
the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, the pirate's
new role may well have turned out a success.
We came up to Niue graced by a last touch of the piratical
spirit. There was some blusterous weather as we neared
the great island with its iron-bound, rocky coasts, towards
which we had been making for so many days, but we
swept up towards the land with every rag of canvas set,
for that was the pirate captain's custom, and he would not
break it. By-and-by, as I was standing on the main deck,
holding on to the deckhouse, while I looked at the looming
mass of blue ahead, the main square-sail gave way with
a report like a gun, and began to thrash the foremast
i8o IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
with streamers of tattered canvas. The pirate had it
down in a twinkling, and got the men to bend on a new
sail immediately. It went up to the sound of yelling
Maori chants (for the crew liked this sort of excitement),
and once more the ship fled on towards Niue with every
sail straining against the gusty wind. Half-an-hour, and
crack ! the new square-sail was gone too, and half of
it away to leeward like a huge grey bird in a very great
hurry. And the pirate, as we began to draw inshore,
raged up and down the deck, like a lion baulked of its
prey. To come up to Niue without every sail set was a dis-
grace that he had never yet encountered, and it evidently
hit him hard that he had not another sail in the locker,
and was forced to " carry on " as best he could without it.
Niue, or Savage Island, is no joke to approach. It
is about forty miles round, and almost every yard of the
whole forty is unapproachable, by reason of the pre-
cipitous cliffs, guarded by iron spears of coral rock, that
surround ft on every side. There are one or two places
where an approach can be made, in suitable weather, with
care, but it is quite a common thing for sailing vessels to
beat on and off as much as a week, before they succeed
in landing passengers and goods. We came up on a very
gusty day, with the blow-holes in the cliffs spouting like
whales as we went by, but the pirate captain ran us into
the anchorage below Alofi as easily as if it had been perfect
weather and an excellent harbour, and we put out a boat
to land our goods, including myself. The pirate had not
an ounce of caution in his body, but, as an old Irishman
on one of the islands declared : " The divil takes care of
his own, let him alone for that, and it's not the Pirate
that he's goin' to let into any houle till he lets him into
the biggest wan of all mind that ! "
CHAPTER X
How not to see the Islands Lonely Niue A Heathen Quaran-
tine Board The King and the Parliament The Great
Question of Gifts Is it Chief-like ? The New Woman in
Niue Devil-fish and Water-Snakes An Island of Ghosts
How the Witch-Doctor died The Life of a Trader.
LANDINGS on Pacific islands are not usually easy,
but there are few approaches as bad as that of
Niue, the solitary outlier of Polynesia. It is a difficult
task to get within reasonable distance of the land in the
first place, and when the ship has succeeded in manoeuvring
safely up to the neighbourhood of the cruel cliffs, the
trouble is only beginning. There are no harbours worth
the name on the island, although the cliffs show an
occasional crack through which a boat may be brought down
to the sea, and the circling reef is broken here and there.
The best that a ship can do is to lie off at a safe distance,
put out a boat, and trust to the skill of the crew to effect
a landing on the wharf. In anything but really calm
weather, communication is impossible. However, there
are very many calm days in this part of the Pacific, so
chances are fairly frequent.
It was not at all as calm as one could have wished when
the Duchess put out her whaleboat to bring me ashore.
But the pirate trusted to his luck, and was, as usual,
justified. The boat passage proved to be a mere crack
in the reef, through which the sea rushed with extreme
violence, dancing us up and down like a cork. It was
not difficult for our smart Maori crew to fend us off the
knife-edged coral walls with their oars, as we manoeuvred
182 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
down towards the spider-legged little iron ladder standing
up in the surf, and pretending to be a wharf. But when
we got within an oar's length of the ladder, and the boat
was leaping wildly on every swell, things got more exciting.
The only way of landing on Niue is to watch your time
at the foot of the ladder, while the men fend the boat off
the coral, and jump on to the rungs at the right moment.
A native standing on the platform at the top takes you
by the arms as you rise, and snatches you into the air as
the eagle snatched Endymion. Only, instead of going all
the way to heaven, you land on the pier or what passes
for it and find yourselves upon. the soil of Niue.
Behind the pier rises a little pathway cut in the face
of the rock, and leading up to the main street of the
capital. Once up the path, we are fairly arrived in Savage
Island.
It is not a place known to the globe-trotting tourist,
as yet. Much of the Pacific has been " discovered " by
the tripper element of recent years, but Niue is still almost
inviolate. Once here, if one seeks the true spirit of the
South Seas, one still may find it.
Travellers go in scores by every steamer to Samoa,
to Fiji, to Honolulu, which are on the beaten track of
" round-the-world." They drive up to Stevenson's villa,
they make excursions to Nuuanu Pali, they see a sugar
plantation here, and a kava drinking there, and a native
dance, specially composed to suit tourists' tastes, some-
where else. They stay a week in a fine modern hotel,
drink green cocoanuts (and other things that are stronger),
take photographs of island girls wearing imported Parisian
or Sydney costumes, and think they have seen the life
of the islands. Never was there a greater mistake. The
sweet South Seas do not so easily yield up their secret
and their charm. The spell that for three hundred years
has drawn the wandering hearts of the world across the
ocean ploughed by the keels of Drake and Hawkins and
Cook, of Dampier, Bougainville, and Bligh, will not unfold
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 183
itself save to him who will pay the price. And the price
to-day is the same in kind, though not in degree, as that
paid by those old explorers and adventurers hard travel,
scanty food, loneliness, loss of money and time, forgetting
the cities and civilisation. To know the heart of the
South Seas, all these things must be encountered willingly,
with a love of the very hardship they may bring, strong
as the seabird's love of the tossing waters and thunder-
waking storm.
The typical British tourist yes, even he hears from
far off, at times, the mysterious call of the island world,
and tells himself that he will listen to it a little nearer,
and enjoy the siren song sung to so many long before
him. Hence his visits to the great Pacific ports that can
be reached by liner ; hence, in most cases, his gradually
acquired conviction that the islands are, after all, very
much like any other place in the tropics beautiful,
interesting, but Well, writer fellows always exagger-
ate : every one knows that.
Hotel dinners, big liners, shops, hired carriages, guides,
and picture postcards these things are death to the
spirit of the South Seas. This is the first lesson that the
island wanderer must learn. Where every one goes the
bloom is off the peach. Leave the great ports and the
steamers ; disregard the advice of every one who knows
anything (most people in the island towns know every-
thing, but you must not listen to them, for the jingling
of the trade dollar has long since deafened their ears to
the song of the mermaids on the coral beaches) ; take
ship on a schooner, it does not much matter where ; live
in a little bungalow under the palms for weeks or months ;
ride and swim and feast with the brown people of the
coral countries, as one of themselves ; learn, if you do
not already know, how to live on what you can get, and
cook what you catch or pick or shoot, to sleep on a mat
and wash in a stream, do without newspapers and posts,
forget that there ever was a war anywhere, or an election,
184 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
or that there will ever be a " season " anywhere again ;
and so perhaps, the charm of the island world will whisper
itself in your waiting ear. What then ? What happened
to the men who ate the enchanted fruit of the lotus long
ago ? Well, no one ever said that the sweetness of the
fruit was not worth all that it cost.
There are. about five thousand native inhabitants on
Niue, and generally a score or so of whites almost all
traders. Alofi, the capital, possesses a few hundred of
the former, and nearly all the latter. It is a winsome
little spot, and I loved it the moment the wide grassy
street first broke upon my view, as I climbed the narrow
pathway from the shore.
The houses stand down one side, as is the invariable
custom of South Sea towns. They are whitewashed
concrete for the most part, built by the natives out of
materials furnished by the coral reef. The roofs are
plaited pandanus thatch, high and steep. The doors are
mostly windows, or the windows doors it would be hard
to say which. They are simply long openings filled in
with wooden slats, which can be sloped to suit the wind
and weather. Mats and cooking pots and the inevitable
Chinese camphor-wood box, for keeping clothes in, are
all the furniture. Round the doorways grow palms and
gay hibiscus, and cerise-flowered poinsettia, and here and
there a native will have set up an odd decoration of
glittering stalactites from the caves on the shore, to sparkle
in the sun by his doorstep. The white men's houses
have grass compounds in front for the most part, and
many have iron roofs, glass windows, and other luxuries.
All these houses look the one way across the wide,
empty grassy street, between the stems of the leaning
palms, to the sunset and the still blue sea. It is a lonely
sea, this great empty plain lying below the little town.
The Duchess calls twice a year, the mission steamer once,
a trade steamer, ancient and worn out, limps across from
Tonga, about three hundred miles away, every ten or twelve
months. That is all. The island itself owns nothing
bigger than a whaleboat, and cannot as a rule communi-
cate with any other place in case of emergency. Some
few months before my visit, a trader had very urgent
need to send a letter to Australia. After waiting in vain
for something to call, he sighted an American timber
brig on her way to Sydney, far out on the horizon.
Hastily launching a native canoe, and filling it with fruit,
he paddled three or four miles out to sea, in the hope
of being seen by the ship. His signals were perceived,
and the brig hove to, when the trader paddled up to her,
offered his fruit as a gift, and begged the captain to take
his letter. This the sailor willingly did, and still more
willingly accepted the excellent Niue bananas and oranges
that went with the missive. And so the post was caught
Niue fashion.
There is no doctor on the island as a rule, and if you
want to die during the intervals between ships, you may
do so unopposed. I am almost afraid to state how healthy
the people of Niue are as a rule, in spite of or can it be
in consequence of ? this deprivation.
The " bush " overflows the town, after the charming
way of bush, in this island world. Big lilies, bell-shaped,
snowy petalled, and as long as your hand, spill over into
the main street from the bordering scrub. The grass
on the top of the cliff, the day I landed, was blazing
with great drifts of fiery salvia, and starred with pink
and yellow marigolds. About the houses were clumps
of wild " foliage plants," claret and crimson leaved,
looking like a nurseryman's bedding-out corner. The
coco palm that I knew so well had a sister palm here,
of a kind new to me an exceedingly graceful tree twenty
to thirty feet high, bearing small inedible berry-like
fruits, and splendid fan-shaped leaves, of the shape and
size once so familiar in the " artistic type of drawing-
room " at home. Pinnacles of fantastic grey rock, all
spiked and spired, started up unexpectedly in the midst
i86 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
of the riotous green, and every pinnacle was garlanded
cunningly with wreaths and fronds of flowering vines.
There were mammee-apples and bananas beside most
of the houses : yellow oranges hung as thickly in the
scrub as ornaments on a Christmas tree, and one or two
verandahs were decorated with the creeping trailers of
the delicious granadilla. A land of peace and plenty, it
looked in the golden rays of the declining sun, that windy
blue afternoon. It proved alas, to be nothing of the
kind : its soil is fertile, but so thinly scraped over the
coral rock for foundation, that very little in the way of
nutritious food will grow it has no water save what can
be gathered from deep clefts in the rocks, the bananas
are scanty, the mammee-apples unsatisfying, and the
" oranges " are for the most part citrons, drinkable, as
lemons are, but little use for anything else. Indee.d, Niue
is a useless place altogether, and nobody makes fortunes
there no w-a-days, 'though one or two did well out of the
" first skim " of its trading, a generation ago. Nor does
any one grow fat there, upon a diet of tinned meats,
biscuit, and fruit. Nor are there any marvellous " sights,"
like the volcanoes of Hawaii, or the tribe dancing and fire-
walking of Fiji. Still I loved Niue, and love it yet.
It was so very far away, to begin with. In other islands,
with regular steamers, people concerned themselves to
some degree about the doings of the outer world, and used
to wonder how things were getting on, beyond the still
blue bar of sea. Newspapers arrived, people came and
went, things were done at set times, more or less. One
was still in touch with the world, though out of sight.
But in Niue, the isolation was complete. There was
no come and go. We were on the road to nowhere.
Nobody knew when any communication with anywhere
would be possible, so nobody troubled, and save for an
occasional delirious day when a ship really did come in,
and waked us all from our enchanted slumber for just
so long as you might turn round and look about you before
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 187
dropping off into dreams again, we were asleep to all
that lay beyond the long horizon line below the seaward-
leaning palms. Niue was the world. The rest was a
cloudy dream.
I rented a little cottage in the heart of a palm- grove,
when I settled down to wait for the problematic return
of the Duchess, and see the life of Niue. It belonged to
a native couple, Kuru and Vekia, who were well-to-do,
and had saved money selling copra. The Niuean, unlike
every other Polynesian, is always willing and anxious
to make a bargain or do a deal of any kind, and Kuru
and his wife were as delighted to get the chance of a " let "
as any seaside landlady. They moved their small goods
out of the house most readily, and left me in full posses-
sion of the two rooms and the verandah and the innumer-
able doors and windows, with everything else to find for
myself.
A general collection of furniture, taken up by a friendly
white resident, resulted in the loan of a bed and a box
and a table, three chairs, some cups and cutlery, and a
jug and basin. These, with a saucepan lent by my land-
lady (who, as I have said, was rich, and possessed many
superfluities of civilisation), made up the whole of my
household goods. For two months I occupied the little
house among the palms, and was happy. " Can a man
be more than happy ? " runs the Irish proverb, and
answer there is none.
There were never, in all my island wanderings, such
shadows or such sunsets, as I saw in lonely Niue. The
little house was far away from others, and the palms
stood up round it close to the very door. In the white,
white moonlight, silver-clear and still as snow, I used
to stay for half a night on my verandah, sitting cross-
legged in the darkness of the eaves, and watching the
wonderful great stars of shadow drawn out, as if in ink,
round the foot of every palm-tree. The perfect circle
of tenderly curving rays lay for the most part still as
i88 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
some wonderful drawing about the foot of the tree ; but
at rare intervals, when the hour was very late, and even
the whisper of the surf upon the reef seemed to have grown
tired and dim and far away, the night would turn and
sigh in its sleep for just a moment, and all the palm-tree
fronds would begin to sway and shiver up in the sparkling
moon-rays, glancing like burnished silver in the light.
Then the star at the foot would dance and sway as well,
and weave itself into forms of indescribable beauty, as if
the spirit of Giotto of the marvellous circles were hovering
unseen in the warm air of this alien country that he never
knew, and pencilling forms more lovely than his mortal
fingers ever drew on earth. . . . Yes, it was worth losing
one's sleep for, in those magic island nights.
In the daytime, I rode and walked a good deal about
the island, which is very fairly provided with roads,
and tried to find out what I could about the people and
their ways. There is not a more interesting island in the
Pacific than Niue, from an ethnological point of view ;
but my scientific knowledge was too contemptibly small
to enable me to make use of my opportunities. This
I regretted, for the place is full of strange survivals of
ancient customs and characteristics, such as are seldom
to be found among Christianised natives. The people
are somewhat rude and rough in character ; indeed until
about forty years ago, they were actually dangerous.
Their island is one of the finest of natural fortresses, and
they used it as such, declining to admit strangers on any
pretext. Captain Cook attempted to land in 1777, but
was beaten off before he had succeeded in putting his boat's
crew ashore. Other travellers for the most part gave the
place a wide berth.
When men of the island wandered away to other
places (the Niuean is a gipsy by nature) they received no
kindly welcome on attempting to come home. The Niuean
had an exceeding fear of imported diseases, and to protect
himself against them, he thought out a system of sanitary
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 189
precaution, all on his own account, which was surely the
completest the world has ever seen. There was no weak
lin'c in the chain : no break through which measles, or
cholera, or worse could creep, during the absence of an
official, or owing to the carelessness of an inspector.
Every person attempting to land on Niue, be he sick or
well, stranger, or native, was promptly killed ! That was
Nine's rule. You might go away from the island freely,
but if you did, you had better not attempt to come back
again, for the " sanitary officers " would knock your
brains out on the shore. It was without doubt the simplest
and best system of quarantine conceivable. Possibly
as a result of this Draconian law, the people of Niue are
remarkably strong and hardy to-day, though since the
relaxation of the ancient rule, a certain amount of disease
has crept in.
The people, though warlike and fierce, were never canni-
bals here at the worst. They did not even eat their
enemies when slain in battle. They enjoyed a fight very
much, however, when they got the chance of one, and still
remembered the Waterloo victory of their history, against
the fierce Tongans, about two hundred years ago. The
Tongans, until within the last half-century, seem to have
been the Danes of the Pacific, always hunting and harrying
some other maritime people, and always a name of terror
to weak races. Tonga is the nearest land to Niue, being
about three hundred miles away, so it was not to be ex-
pected that the Niueans would escape invasion, and they
were fully prepared for the Tongan attack when it did
come. They did not attempt to meet force by force.
There was one place they knew where the Tongans might
succeed in landing, and near to this they laid a cunning
plan for defence.
A trader took me down to see the spot one Sunday
afternoon. It is one of the numerous caves of Niue, with
a top open for the most part to the sky. The cave runs
underneath the greenery and the creeping flowers of the
190 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
bush a long black gash just showing here and there among
the leaves. The drop is forty or fifty feet, and an unwary
foot might very easily stumble over its edge, even now.
On the day when the Tongan war canoes broke the
level line of the sea horizon, the Niue men hastened to the
shore, and prepared the cave in such a way as to set a
fatal and most effective trap for their enemies. They
cut down a mass of slight branches and leafy twigs, and
covered the gulf completely, so that nothing was to be
seen except the ordinary surface of the low-growing bush.
When the enemies landed, the Niue men showed themselves
on the farther side of the cave, as if fleeing into the woods.
The Tongans, with yells of joy, rushed in pursuit, straight
over the gulf and in another moment were lying in
crushed and dying heaps at the foot of the pit, while the
men of Niue, dashing out of ambush on every side, ran
down into the cave from its shallow end and butchered
their enemies as they lay.
After this, it is said that the Tongans left Niue alone.
Because of the loneliness and inaccessibility of the
place, the Savage Islanders have always been different
from the rest of the Pacific. The typical " Kanaka "
is straight-haired, light brown in colour, mild and gentle
and generous in disposition, ready to welcome strangers
and feast them hospitably. He is aristocratic to the back-
bone in his ideas, and almost always has a native class of
nobles and princes, culminating in a hereditary king.
The Savage Islander is often frizzy-haired, and gener-
ally a darkish brown in colour. His manners are rather
brusque, and he gives nothing without obtaining a heavy
price for it. He has no chiefs, nobles, or princes, and does
not want any. There is always a head of the State, who
enjoys a certain amount of mild dignity, and may be called
the King for want of a better name. The office is not
hereditary, however, the monarch being elected by the
natives who form the island Parliament. Meetings of this
Parliament are held at irregular intervals ; and the King,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 191
together with the British Resident Commissioner, takes
an important part in the debates.
These are very formal affairs. The brown M.P.s who
live, each in his own village, in the utmost simplicity of
manners and attire, dress themselves up for the day in
full suits of European clothing, very heavy and hot, instead
of the light and comfortable cotton kilt they generally
wear. They travel into Alofi and join the local members
on the green before the public hall generally used as a
school-house. King Tongia joins them, the British Resi-
dent comes also, and for hour after hour, inside the great,
cool hall, with its matted floor and many open window-
embrasures, the talk goes on. This road is to be made,
that banyan tree is to be removed, regulation pigsties are
to be built in such a village, petitions are to be sent up
to New Zealand about the tax on tobacco and so on, and
so on. The king is a tough old man ; he has his say on
most questions, and it is not considered generally good for
health or business to oppose him too much ; but of royal
dignity he has, and asks for, none.
There is something quite American in the history of
Tongia's elevation, some seven years ago. He had acted
as Prime Minister to the late head of the State ; and when
the latter died he calmly assumed the reins without going
through the formality of an election. This was not the
usual custom, and some of the members remonstrated.
Tongia told them, however, that he was in the right, and
meant to stay on. When the captain of a ship died on a
voyage, did not his chief mate take over command ? The
cases were exactly parallel, to his mind. This argument
pleased the members, who had most of them been to sea,
and Tongia was allowed to retain his seat, the objectors
calming themselves with the thought of the sovereign's
age he was well over eighty at that time. " He is only
the stump of a torch," they said ; " he will soon burn out."
But the stump is burning yet, and shows no symptoms of
extinction. Tongia married a pretty young girl soon after
192 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
his " election," settled down in the royal palace a white-
washed cottage with a palm-thatch roof and seems
likely to outlast many of his former opponents.
The powers of the king, limited as they are, have lessened
since 1902, when New Zealand annexed Niue a pro-
ceeding that had its humorous side, if one examines the
map, for Niue is something like a thousand miles from
Auckland. The Resident Commissioner who is responsible
for the well-being of the island lives in a house much
more like a palace than Tongia's modest hut, and is in
truth the real ruler of the place. His work, however, is
not overpowering. He is supposed to be judge and law-
giver, among many other duties, but in Niue no one ever
seems to do anything that requires punishment. There is
nothing in the shape of a prison, if any one did. Innocent
little crimes, such as chicken stealing with extenuating
circumstances, or allowing pigs to trespass into somebody's
garden, occasionally blot the fair pages of the island
records, but a little weeding, or a day's work on the road
is considered sufficient punishment for these. At the
time of my stay, .which lasted nearly two months, such a
wave of goodness seemed to be passing over the island that
the Resident complained he could not find enough crime
in the place to keep his garden weeded, and declared that
he really wished somebody would do something, and do it
quick, or all his imported flowers would be spoiled !
. Since the forties, missionaries have been busy in Savage
Island, and there is no doubt that they have done their
work effectively. The early traders, who arrived near
the same time, also helped considerably in the civilisation
of the natives. Drink has never been a trouble on Niue,
and at the present date, no native ever tastes it, and strict
regulations govern importation by the whites, for their
own use. The natives are healthy, although European
diseases are by no means unknown. Skin diseases are so
troublesome that many of the traders wash the money
they get from the bush towns, before handling, and the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 193.
new-comer's first days in the island are sure to be harassed
by the difficulties of avoiding miscellaneous hand-shaking.
Knowing what one knows about the prevalence of skin-
troubles, one does not care to run risks ; but the Niuean,
like all islanders, has unfortunately learned the habit of
continual hand-shaking from his earliest teachers, and is
never likely to unlearn it. So the visitor who does not
want to encounter disappointed faces and puzzled in-
quiries, looks out old gloves to go a-walking with, and
burns them, once he or she is settled in the place, and no
longer a novelty.
There are manners in Niue of a sort. " Fanage fei ! "
is the greeting to any one met on the road, and it must
not be left out, or the Savage Islanders will say you have
no manners. It means, " Where are you going ? " and it
is not at all an empty inquiry, for you must mention the
name of your ' destination in reply, and then repeat the
inquiry on your own account, and listen for the answer.
Riding across the island day by day, I used to pass in a
perfect whirlwind of " Where- are-you-goings ? " calling
out hastily, as the horse cantered over the grassy road,
" Avatele," or " Mutelau," (names of villages) or " Misi
Nicolasi " (Mrs. Nicholas, a trader's wife), and adding as
I passed on : " Fanage f ei ? " to the man or woman who
had greeted me. There was generally a long story in reply,
but I fear I was usually out of hearing before it was ended.
My manners, out riding, must have struck Niue as de-
cidedly vulgar.
It was during the first few days of my stay that I attained
a distinction that I had never hoped to see, and that I am
not at all likely to see again. I was made a headline in
a copybook 1 If that is not fame, what is ?
The native school-teacher a brown, black-eyed and
bearded man of middle age and dignified presence had
called at my house shortly after my arrival, to display his
English and his importance, and welcome the stranger.
He wanted, among a great many other things, to know
7
194 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
what my name was, and how it was spelt. I wrote it down
for him, and he carried it away, studying it the while.
Next day, the copies set in the principal school for the
youth of Niue consisted of my name in full, heading the
following legend : " While this lady is in Niue, we must
all be very good." Evidently a case cf " Apres moi le
deluge ! "
Sitting on a box in my cool little shady house of a morn-
ing, writing on my knee, with the whisper of the palms
about the door, and the empty changeless blue sea lying
below, I used to receive visitor after visitor, calling on
different errands some to sit on the verandah and look
at me in silence ; some to come in, squat on the floor, and
discourse fluently for half an hour in a language I did not
understand (they never seemed distressed by the absence
of replies) ; some to sell curios ; some to give dinners !
You give dinners in Niue in a strictly literal sense. Instead
of bringing the guest to the dinner, you take the dinner to
the guest, and then wait to see it eaten. It generally
consists of a baked fish wrapped in leaves, several lumps
of yam, hot and moist, and as heavy as iron, a pudding
made of mashed pumpkin and breadfruit, another made of
bananas, sugarcane, and cocoanut, some arrowroot boiled
to jelly, and the inevitable taro top and cocoanut cream
about which I must confess I was rather greedy. The rest
of the dinner I used to accept politely, as it was set out
on the floor, eat a morsel or two here and there, and after-
wards hand over the remainder to Kuru and his wife,
who were always ready to dispose of it. At the beginning,
I used to offer gifts in return, which were always refused.
Then, acting on the advice of old residents, I reserved the
gift for a day or two, and presented it at the first suitable
opportunity. It was always readily accepted, when
offered after this fashion, and thus I learned one more
lesson as to island etiquette. ,
" You'll see a lot of stuff in travel books," said an old
resident to me, " about the wonderful generosity of the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 195
island people, all over the Pacific how they press gifts
of every kind on travellers, and won't take any return.
Well, that's true, and it's not true. All the island people
love strangers, and are new-fangled with every fresh face,
and they do come along with presents, but as to not want-
ing a return, why, that isn't quite the case. They won't
take payment, mostly, and there's very few places where
they'll even take a present, right off. But they always
expect something back, some time. I know that isn't
what the books say, but books are mostly wrong about
anything you've got to go below the top of things to see
and the traveller likes that pretty idea, of getting presents
for nothing, too much to give it up easily. Still, you may
take my word for it that the natives will take a return
for anything and everything they give you, here and
everywhere else, unless it's a drink of cocoanut, or a bit
of fruit they offer you on the road, or maybe a bit of dinner,
if you'd drop in on them at meals. Set presents you've
got to pay for, and more than their value too, if you take
them. I don't myself, I find native presents too expensive.
" What do you want to give ? Oh, well, if a woman
brings you in a dinner or two, give her a trade silk hand-
kerchief, one of those shilling ones, some day. Or if they
bring you baskets of fruit, give them a couple of sticks of
tobacco. They'll take payment for fruit here, in that
way, at any time. You'll need to give some things when
you're going away, to the people you've seen most of
a few yards of cotton, or something of that kind. White
people are expected to give presents, all over the island
it needn't be dear things, but it ought to be something.
If the lords and folk who have been round the Pacific in
their yachts only heard what the natives say of them,
because they didn't know that, they'd take care to bring
a case or two of cheap stuff for presents next time. ' Not
chief-like,' is what the natives say and I ask you yourself,
it isn't ' chief -like,' is it, to take all you can get, and give
not a stick of niggerhead or an inch of ribbon in return ?
196 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
I'd think they'd be too proud but then, I'm not a tourist
trotting round the globe, I'm only a man who works for
his living.
" As for yourself, you take my advice, and say right
out you don't want the dinners, when they bring them.
Yes, it'll offend them, but you must either do that, or pay
for stuff you don't want three days out of seven, or six
days, more likely, if they think you're liberal-minded.
You'll get no end of presents when you're going away,
pretty things enough, and those will have to be paid for
in presents, too. Better make it as cheap as you can,
meantime.
" But those people who go travelling like princes, and
load their cabins up with spears and clubs and tappa-cloths
and shells the natives have given them everywhere they
went and not a farthing, or a farthing's worth, do they
let it cost them from end to end I tell you, they're a dis-
grace to England," concluded my informant hotly.
" I am quite sure it is simply because they do not know
how should they ? " I asked, trying to defend the absent
globe-trotters.
" Decent feeling ought to teach them ! " declared the
critic of manners, who was evidently not to be pacified.
I had my dinner to cook, so I went away, and left him
still revolving the iniquities of travelling milords in his
memory. But I did not forget the conversation, for it
seemed to me that the facts about this matter of present-
giving and taking ought to be known as widely as possible.
In nearly two years of island travel that followed after those
days, I had full opportunity of proving the truth of the
statements made by my Niue acquaintance, and every
experience only served to confirm them.
Travellers who visit the islands should note this fact,
and lay in a stock of suitable goods at Sydney, which is
the starting point for most Pacific travel. There are
various firms who make a speciality of island trade, and
these will usually sell any reasonable quantity at wholesale
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 197
prices. The natives of the Pacific, in general, are not to
be put off with worthless trifles as presents, noi do they
care for beads, unless in the few groups still remaining
uncivilised. They like best the sort of goods with which
they are already familiar, and do not care for " imported "
novelties. Silk handkerchiefs are liked everywhere, and
they are easy to carry. Cotton or silk stuff is much valued.
Imitation jewellery brooches, pins, etc. is valued quite
as much as real, except in Niue, where the natives seem
to have a natural craving and liking for precious metals.
Tinned foods of all kinds, and sweets, are perhaps better
appreciated than anything else. Tinned salmon in
especial, is the safest kind of " tip " than can be given to
any native, from a lordly Samoan chief, down to a wild
" bushie " from the Solomons.
Withal, one must not take away the character of the
island world for hospitality, because of its childlike fancy
for presents. Many and many a destitute white man can
tell of the true generosity and ungrudging kindness he
has met with at the hands of the gentle brown men and
women, when luck was hard and the whites would have
none of him. They are not fair-weather friends, in the
European sense of the word. True, when the weather is
sunny with you, they will come round and bask in the
warmth, and share your good luck. But when the rainy
days come, they will share all they have with you, just as
freely, and they will not look for presents, then.
The industries of the island filled up many a pleasant
morning. Niue is supposed to be the most hard-working
of all the Pacific islands, and certainly its people do not
seem to eat the bread of idleness. Here, there is no
lounging and dreaming and lotus-eating on the sounding
coral shore perhaps there isn't much shore anyway ;
perhaps because the Savage Islander is not made that
way. The food of the people consists largely of yams,
and in a country which has hardly any depth of soil, these
are hard to grow, and need care. The bananas are grown
7t
198 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
in the most wonderful way in the clefts of the coral rocks,
so that they actually appear to be springing out of the
stone. Copra is made in fair quantity, and many of the
people spend the greater part of their time collecting a
certain kind of fungus which is exported to Sydney, and
used (or so report declares) for making an imitation of
birds' nest soup in China.
The proportion of women on the island is very large,
because there are always at least a thousand men, out of
a total population of five thousand souls, away working
elsewhere. The Niuean is a bit of a miser, and will do
anything for money. He engages, therefore, as a labourer
in the plantations of Samoa, where the natives will not
do any work they can avoid, or goes up to Maiden Island
to the guano pits, or takes a year or two at sea on an island
schooner, or goes away as fireman on the missionary
steamer anything to make money. Meantime his women-
kind stay at home and keep themselves. They work about
the white people's houses, they act as stevedores to the
ships, they fetch and carry all over the island. When I
wanted two heavy trunks conveyed a distance of six miles
one day, four sturdy Niue girls came to do the work ;
slung the trunks on two poles, trotted away with them,
and reached the end of the journey before my lazy horse
had managed to carry me ^o my destination. They
do an immense amount of plaiting work mats, fans,
baskets, and above all, hats, of which the annual export
runs into thousands of dozens. These hats are made of
fine strips of dried and split pandanus leaf ; they much
resemble the coarser kind of Panama, and give excellent
shade and wear. They are worn over the whole Pacific,
and a great part of New Zealand, and, I strongly suspect,
are exported to England under the name, and at the price
of second-grade Panamas. A clever worker will finish
one in a day. Much of the plaiting is done in caves in
the hot season, as the material must be kept fairly cool
and moist.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 199
When the Niue folks are not working, they idle a little
at times, but not very much. They sing in chorus
occasionally, but it is not an absorbing occupation with
them, and they do not dance a great deal either, since
the advent of missionary rule. Their chief amusement
is an odd one walking round the island. You can
scarcely take a long ride without encountering a stray
picnic party of natives, mostly women, striding along at
a good round pace, and heavily laden with fruit, food,
and mats. They always complete the journey forty
miles in a day, picknicking on the roadside for meals,
and seem to enjoy themselves thoroughly. The strenuous
life, exemplified after this fashion, is certainly the last
thing one would expect to find in the Pacific. But then,
the great fascination of the island world lies in the fact
that here, as nowhere else, " only the unexpected happens."-
It is a day of molten gold, with a sea coloured like a
sheet of sapphire glass in a cathedral window. I am busy
washing up my breakfast things at the door (there is no
false shame about the performance of domestic duties in
the capital city of Niue) when a couple of native girls appear
on the grass pathway, their wavy hair loose and flowing,
their white muslin dresses kilted up high over strong brown
limbs. Each carries a clean " pareo " in her hand. They
are going for a swim, one of them informs me in broken
English : will I come too ?
Of course I will. I get out my own bathing dress, and
follow the pair down the cliff, scrambling perilously from
crag to crag, until we reach a point where it is possible
to get down on to the narrow rocky ledge at the verge
of the sea. Within the reef here there is a splendid stretch
of protected water, peacock-blue in colour, immensely
deep, and almost cold. There are no sharks about here,
the girls tell me, and it is an excellent place for a swim.
200 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Oh, for a Royal Academician to paint the picture made
by the younger girl, as she stands on the edge of the rocks
ready to leap in, dressed in a bright blue scarf that is wound
round and round her graceful bronze body from shoulder
to knee, and parting her full wavy hair aside with slender
dark fingers ! Beauty of form did not die out with the
ancient Greeks : the Diana of the Louvre and the Medici
Venus may be seen any day of any year, on the shores of
the far-away islands, by those who know lovely line when
they see it, and have not given over their senses, bound
and blinded, to the traditions of the schools. If there is
any man in the world to-day who can handle a hammer
and chisel as Phidias did, let him come to the South Sea
Islands and look there for the models that made the ancient
Greek immortal. The sculptor who can mould a young
island girl, Tahitian for the Venus type, Samoan for the
Diana, or a young island chief, like Mercury, in bronze,
will give the world something as exquisite and as immortal
as any marvel from the hand of Phidias or Praxiteles.
My beautiful Niue girl was an exception, so far as her
own island went. Niue women are strong and well made,
but not lovely as a rule. Her companion was as sturdy as a
cart-horse, but as plain as a pig. She smoked a huge pipe,
chewed plug tobacco, and laughed like a hyena. They
were truly a well-contrasted pair.
The reef was a good way off, so we all struck out for
that, when we came up panting and blowing from our dive.
The girls gave me a fine exhibition of under- water swimming
now and then, slipping easily underneath the gleaming
surface, and disappearing from view below, for so long a
time that one became quite nervous. My pretty little
friend persuaded me to accompany her once, and though
I did not like it among the ugly-looking coral caves, I dived
for a short time, and endeavoured to follow her flying
heels.
Under water among the coral reefs ! It sounds romantic,
but it was not pleasant. Five feet beneath the surface,
.^ IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 201
the light was as clear as day, and one could see all about
one, far too much, for the things that were visible were
disquieting. I knew extremely well that coral reefs are
the haunt of every kind of unpleasant sea-beast, and I
fancied Victor Hugo's " pieuvre " at the very least, within
the gloomy arch of every cave. There were far too many
fish also, and they were much too impertinent, and a fish
in one's hair, even if harmless, is not nice. I had not gone
down much over a fathom, when I turned, and began
to beat upwards again looking eagerly at the light. And
then I saw a thing that as nearly as possible made me open
my mouth and drown myself.
It was merely a bunch of black waving trailers, coming
out of the dark of the rocks, and spreading between me
and the pale-green light of day. I did not know what it
was, and I do not know, to this day. And, like the run-
away soldier in the poem, " I don't know where I went to,
for I didn't stop to see." I was on the top of the water,
twenty yards away, and swimming at racing speed, when
I realised the fact that I was still alive, some moments
later. And on the surface I stayed, for the rest of the
swim. The native girls were exceedingly amused, for the
islander fears nothing that is in the water or under it ;
but I did not mind their laughing.
One of them then, as she swam along, began laying her
mouth to the surface of the water, and blowing bubbles,
laughing all the time. She insisted that I should do it
too, and I imitated her, at which she seemed delighted.
" That what we doing, suppose some shark come," she
explained, " shark he plenty frighten, no like that."
We practised this useful accomplishment for some
time, and then went ashore again. I regret to say that
I roused the amusement of my companions yet again,
before we landed, by making hasty exclamations, and
dodging rapidly away from the embraces of a black-and-
white banded snake, about four feet long, that suddenly
appeared from nowhere in particular, moving very swiftly,
202 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
and seemed disposed to argue the right of way. The
lagoon at Raratonga had not prepared me for the Zoologi-
cal Garden in which one had to bathe at Niue.
" Snake he no harm," said my Venus Anadyomene,
as she stood on the rock, with her bathing scarf in her
hand, wringing it out in the calmest manner in the world.
" Plenty-plenty snake stop there."
There were indeed plenty of snakes. One could see
them any fine day from the top of the cliffs, gliding through
the water below, or lying on the rocks in family parties of
a score or two, conspicuous at a great distance, because of
their handsome black-and-white banded skins. As to
there being no harm well, I never heard of any one in
Niue being injured. But a boy in Fiji trod on one of these
checkerboarded creatures, about that time, and died in
half an hour from its bite. I am strongly inclined to
think that the Niue snake is poisonous, like almost
all sea-snakes, though it does not seem at all ready to
attack.
What was it I saw under water ? I never knew, but
I guessed as much as I .wanted, a day or two later, when
I saw a native, fishing on the reef near my bathing-place,
draw up a big devil-fish, with eight limp dangling arms
over six feet long, and carry it away. A trader told me
that he had once pulled up one himself, while out fishing
in a light canoe, and that it seized hold of the little boat,
and made such a fight that he barely escaped with his
life. It is the pleasant habit of this fish, when attacked
by a human being, to fling its hideous tentacles over his
head and face, and force them up into eyes, nostrils, and
mouth, so as to suffocate him, if he cannot master the
creature.
" Do you think there were any sharks about the day
I bathed ? " I inquired.
" Well, if the girls were blowing, I should say there
must have been. They wouldn'l do it for fun altogether,"
he replied.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 203
" Surely they wouldn't bathe, if they knew there were
any about ? "
" Oh, wouldn't they, though ! They don't mind them.
No native is afraid of anything in the sea."
I believed this with reservations, until a day came
in another island, when I nearly furnished a dinner for
a shark myself, and thenceforth gave up bathing in un-
protected tropical waters, for good. It was in Rakahanga,
many hundreds of miles nearer the Line, and I had left
the schooner to enjoy a walk and a bathe. A native
Rakahangan girl, who had never seen a white woman
before, and was wildly excited at the thought of going
bathing with this unknown wonder, found a boat for me,
and allowed me to pick my own place in the inner lagoon
of the island. I chose a spot where the lagoon narrowed
into a bottle-neck communicating with the sea, and we
started our swim. The girl, however, much to my sur-
prise, would not go more than a few yards from the boat,
and declined to follow me when I struck out for the open
water. .1 had been assured by her, so far as my scanty
knowledge of Maori allowed me to understand, that there
were no sharks, so her conduct seemed incomprehensible
until a stealthy black fin, shaped like the mainsail of a
schooner, rose out of the water a few score yards away,
and began making for me !
The native girl was first into the boat, but I was assuredly
not long after her. The back fin did not follow, once I
was out of the water. But the heat of that burning day
far up towards the Line, was hardly enough to warm me,
for half an hour afterwards.
I found, on asking the question that I should have asked
first of all, that the bottle-neck entrance of the lagoon
was a perfect death-trap of sharks, and that more than
one native had been eaten there.
" Why on earth did the girl tell me there were none,
and why did she venture into such a place herself ? " I
asked.
204 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
" Well," said the only white man on the island, " I
should think she knew that any shark will take a white
person, and leave a native, if there's a choice. And if
you had that red bathing-dress on that you're carrying,
why, you were simply making bait of yourself ! "
" But why should she want to see me killed ? "
" Oh, she didn't. She only wanted to have the fun of
a bathe with a white woman, and just took the chances ! "
So much about bathing, in the " sunny isles of Eden."
One is sorry to be obliged to say that it is one of the dis-
appointments of the Pacific. Warm, brilliant water,
snowy coral sands, and glancing fish of rainbow hues, are
charming accompaniments to a bath, no doubt, but they
are too dearly paid for when snakes, sharks, sting-rays,
and devil-fish have to be counted into the party.
Nothing in curious Niue is quite so curious as the native
fancies about ghosts and devils. In spite of their Chris-
tianity, they still hold fast to all their ancient super-
stitions about the powers of evil.
Every Savage Islander believes, quite as a matter of
course, that ghosts walk the roads and patrol the lonely
bush, all night long. Some are harmless spirits, many are
malignant devils. After dark has fallen, about six
o'clock, no one dares to leave his house except for some
very important errand ; and if it is necessary to go out
so late as nine or ten o'clock, a large party will go together
this even in the town itself. Every native has a dog
or two, of a good barking watchdog breed, not to protect
property, for theft is unknown, but to drive away ghosts
at night ! Devil possession is believed in firmly. When
a man takes sick, his neighbours try, in a friendly manner,
to " drive the devil out of him." Perhaps they hang
him up by his thumbs ; possibly they put his feet in
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 205
boiling water, causing fearful scalds ; or they may drive
sharks' teeth into him here and there. But the most
popular method is plain and simple squeezing, to squeeze
the devil out ! This often results in broken ribs, and
occasionally in death. It is a curious fact, in connection
with this " squeezing," that the natives are remarkably
expert " masseurs," and can " drive the devil " out of a
sprain, or a headache, or an attack of neuralgia, by what
seems to be a clever combination of the " petrissage " and
" screw " movement of massage. This, they say, annoys
the devil so much that he goes away. Applied to the
trunk, however, and carried out with the utmost strength
of two or three powerful men, Savage Islander massage is
(as above stated) often fatal and small wonder !
When a man has died, from natural or unnatural causes,,
a great feast is held of baked pig and fowl, yams, taro,
fish, and cocoanuts. Presents are given to the dead
man's relatives, as at a wedding, and other presents are
returned by them to the men who dig the grave. The
corpse is placed in a shallow hole, wrapped in costly mats ;
and then begins the ghostly life of tAe once-loved husband
or father, who now becomes a haunting terror to those
of his own household. Over his grave they erect a massive
tomb of concrete and lime, meant to discourage him, so
far as possible, from coming out to revisit the upper world.
They gather together roots of the splendid scarlet poinsettia,
gorgeous hibiscus, and graceful wine-coloured foliage plants,
and place them about his tomb, to make it attractive to
him. They collect his most cherished possessions his
" papalangi " (white man's) bowler hat, which he used
to wear on Sundays at the five long services in the native
church ; his best trousers ; his orange-coloured singlet
with pink bindings ; his tin mug and plate and place them
on the grave. Savage Island folk are very avaricious and
greedy ; yet not a soul will dare to touch these valuable
goods ; they lie on the grave, in sun and storm, until
rotted or broken. If it is a woman's grave, you may even
206 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
see her little hand sewing-machine (almost every island
in the Pacific possesses scores of these) placed on the
tomb, to amuse the ghost in its leisure hours. There will
be a bottle of cocoanut hair-oil, too, scented with " tiere "
flowers, and perhaps a little looking-glass or comb so that
we can picture the spirit of the dark-eyed island girls,
like mermaids, coming forth at night to sit in the moonlight
and dress their glossy hair if ghosts indeed have hair
like mortal girls !
Mosquito-curtains, somewhat tattered by the wind,
can be seen on many graves, carefully stretched over
the tomb on the regulation uprights and cross-pieces,
as over a bed. This is, no doubt, intended to help the
ghost to lie quiet, lest the mosquitoes should annoy it
so much that it be driven to get up and walk about.
Certainly, if a Savage Island ghost does walk, it is not
because every care is not taken to make it (as the Americans
would say) " stay put."
There are no graveyards on the island. Every man
is buried on his own land, very often alongside the road,
or close to his house. The thrifty islanders plant onions
and pumpkins on the earth close about the tomb, and
enjoy the excellent flavour imparted to these vegetables
by the essence of dead ancestor which they suck up through
the soil. In odd contradiction to this economical plan,
a " tapu " is placed upon all the cocoanut trees owned by
the deceased ; and for a year or more valuable nuts are
allowed to lie where they fall, sprouting into young plants,
and losing many tons of copra annually to the island.
Groups of palms unhealthily crowded together, bear witness
everywhere to the antiquity of this strange practice.
The main, and indeed the only good road, across the
island, owns a spot of fearsome reputation. On a solitary
tableland, swept by salt sea-winds, stand certain groups
of clustered cocoa-palms, sprung from tapu's nuts on
dead men's lands. Here the natives say, the ghosts and
devils have great power, and it is dangerous to walk there
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 207
at night alone, even for white men, who take little account
of native spirits. Many of the white traders of the island
are v shy of the spot ; and some say that when riding in
parties across the island at night, their horses shy and
bolt passing the place, and exhibit unaccountable fear.
Only a year or two ago, a terrible thing happened in this
desolate spot, as if to prove the truth of local traditions.
There was one native of the island, a " witch-doctor,"
learned in charms and spells, who professed not to be afraid
of the devils. He could manage them, he said ; and to
prove it, he used sometimes to walk alone across the island
at night. One morning, he did not return from an excursion
of this nature. The villagers set out in a body to look
for him in the broad light of the tropical sun. They found
him, at the haunted spot, lying on the ground dead. His
face was black and his body horribly contorted. The
devils had fought him, and conquered him so the natives
said. And now no gold would induce a Savage Islander
to pass the fatal spot after dark.
I asked the white missionary doctor resident at the
time of my visit on the island, if he could account for the
death. He said that he had not held a post-mortem
and therefore could not say what the cause might be ;
but the appearance of the corpse was undoubtedly as
described by the natives.
Being anxious to investigate the truth of these stories,
I determined to spend a night on the spot, and see what
happened. The natives were horrified beyond measure
at the idea ; and when an accident on a coral reef laid
me up from walking exercise until just before the schooner
called again at the island to take me away thus pre-
venting me from carrying out the plan they were one
and all convinced that the fall was the work of devils,
anxious to prevent me from meddling with their doings !
The problem, then, remained unsolved, and rests open
to any other traveller to investigate. But as Savage
Island lies far off the track of the wandering tourist, its
208 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
ghosts are likely to remain undisturbed in their happy
hunting-grounds for the present.
Mrs. Joe Gargery would certainly have liked Niue,
for it is a place where there is none of the " pompeying "
So obnoxious to her Spartan soul. And yet, it you stay
there long, you will find out that Savage Island practises
certain of the early Christian virtues, if -it has dropped a
few of its luxuries manufactured by civilisation. If you
want a horse to ride across the island a gentle, native
creature that goes off at both ends, like a fire-cracker,
when you try to mount, biting and kicking simultaneously,
and, when mounted, converts your ride into a sandwich
of jibbing and bolting, you will call in at the nearest
trader's, and tell him you want his horse and his neigh-
bour's saddle and whip. All these will appear at your
door, with a couple of kindly messages, in half an hour.
You will time your arrival at the different villages so as
to hit off some one's meal-hours, walk in, ask for a help of
the inevitable curried tin, and carry off a loaf of bread or
a lump of cake, if your host happens to have baked that
morning and you have not. When a ship comes in
perhaps the bi-yearly steamer from Samoa, with real
mutton and beef in her ice-chest and the capital gorges
for two days, you, the stranger within their gates, will meet
hot chops walking up to your verandah between two hot
plates, and find confectioners' paper bags full of priceless
New Zealand potatoes, sitting on your doorstep. You
will learn to shed tears of genuine emotion at the sight of
a rasher of bacon, and to accept with modest reluctance
the almost too valuable gift of one real onion. Hospitality
among the white folk of Savage Island is hospitality, and
no mistake, and its real generosity can only be appreciated
by those who know the supreme importance assumed by
" daily bread," when the latter is dependent upon the
rare and irregular calls of passing ships.
For, like a good many Pacific Islands, this coral land is
more beautiful than fertile. Its wild fantastic rocks,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 209
which make up the whole surface of the island, produce
in their clefts and hollows enough yam, taro, banana, and
papaw to feed the natives ; but the white man wants more.
Tins are his only resource tins and biscuits, for flour does
not keep long, and bread is often unattainable. Fowls or
eggs can seldom be bought, for the reason that some one
imported a number of cats many years ago ; these were
allowed to run wild in the bush, and have now become wild
in earnest, devouring fowls, and even attacking dogs and
young pigs at times. Why, then, if the island is valueless
to Europeans, and the life hard, do white men live in
Savage Island and many similar places ? For the reason
that fortunes have been piled up, in past years, by trading
in such isolated spots, and that there is still money to be
made, though not so much as of old. Trading in the
Pacific is a double-barrelled sort of business. You settle
down on an island where there is a good supply of copra
(dried cocoa-nut kernel, manufactured by the natives).
You buy the copra from the islanders at about 8 a ton, store
it away in your copra-house until the schooner or the
steamer calls, and then ship it off to Sydney, where it
sells at i 3 to 14. a ton. Freight and labour in storing
and getting on board, eat into the profits. But, in ad-
dition to buying, the trader sells. He has a store, where
cheap prints, violent perfumes, gaudy jewellery, tapes and
buttons and pins and needles, tins of beef, shoes, etc., are
sold to the natives at a price which leaves a very good profit
on their cost down in Auckland.
The laws of all the Pacific Colonies forbid the white
trader to buy from the natives, except with cash ; but, as
the cash comes back to him before long over the counter
of the store, it comes to much the same in the end as the
old barter system of the early days, out of which money
used to be quickly and easily made. Sometimes the trader,
if in a small way of business, sells his copra to captains of
calling ships at a smaller price than the Auckland value.
But nowadays so many stores are owned by big Auckland
210 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
and Sydney firms that most of the stuff is shipped off
for sale in New Zealand or Australia. " Panama " hats,
already mentioned, are a very important article of com-
merce here. Every island has some speciality of its own
besides the inevitable copra ; and the trader deals in all
he can get. The trader's life is, as a rule, a pleasant one
enough. Savage Island is one of the worst places where he
could find himself ; and yet the days pass happily enough
in that solitary outlier of civilisation. There is not much
work to do ; the climate is never inconveniently hot ; the
scenery, especially among the up-country primaeval forests,
is very lovely. There is a good deal of riding and bathing,
a little shooting, and a myriad of wild and fantastic caves
to explore when the spirit moves one. The native canoes
are easy to manage and excellent to fish from.
It is traditional in Savage Island for the few white
people almost all rival traders to hang together, and
live in as friendly a manner as a great family party. If
the great world is shut out, its cares are shut away, and
life sits lightly on all. No one can be extravagant ; no
one can keep up appearances " at the cost of comfort ;
no one is over-anxious, or worried, or excited over any-
thing except when the rare, the long-expected ship comes
in, and the natives rend the air with yells of joy, and the
girls cocoanut-oil their hair, and the white men rush for
clean duck suits and fresh hats, and the mails come in,
and the news is distributed, and cargoes go out, and every
one feasts from dawn till dusk, and all the island is in a
state of frantic ebullition for at least three days. Then,
indeed, Niue is alive.
We were all getting hungry when the Duchess came in
again, after nearly two months' absence, for provisions
were short, and most of us had come down to eating little
green parrots out of the bush, and enjoying them, for want
of anything better. It was certainly tantalising to see
the ship off the island beating about for three days and
more, before she was able to approach, but that is an
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 211
usual incident in Niue. She came up at last, and I got my
traps on board, and paid my bills, and carried away the
model canoes and shell necklaces, and plaited hats and
baskets, that were brought me as parting presents, and gave
a number of yards of cotton cloth, and a good many silk
handkerchiefs, in return. And so the big sails were hoisted
once more with a merry rattling and napping, and away we
went, northward a thousand miles, to desolate, burning
Penrhyn and Maiden Island.
CHAPTER XI
A Life on the Ocean Wave Where They kept the Dynamite
How far from an Iced Drink ? The Peacefulness of a
Pacific Calm A Golden Dust Heap Among the Rookeries
Sailing on the Land All about Guano.
' I A HE pirate captain was gone when the schooner re-
-i- appeared off Niue, and a certain ancient mariner
had taken his place. Things were not quite so exciting
on the Duchess under the new regime, but the order which
reigned on board was something awful ; for the ancient
mariner had been a whaling captain in his day, and on
whaling ships it is more than on any others a case of
" Growl you may, but go you must," for all the crew. The
ancient mariner was as salty a salt as ever sailed the ocean.
He had never been on anything with steam in it, he was as
tough as ship-yard teak, and as strong as a bear, though he
was a grandfather of some years' standing, and he was full
of strange wild stories about the whaling grounds, and odd
happenings in out-of-the-way corners of the Pacific most
of which he seemed to consider the merest commonplaces
of a prosaic existence.
We suffered many things from the cook, in the course
of that long burning voyage towards the Line. The
Duchess's stores were none of the best, and the cook dealt
with them after a fashion that made me understand once
for all the sailor saying : " God sends meat, and the devil
sends cooks." Pea-soup, salt pork and beef, plum duff,
ship's biscuit, sea-pie this was the sort of food that,
in the days before I set foot on the Duchess, I had supposed
to form the usual table of sailing vessels. I fear it was a
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 213
case of sea-story-books, over again. What we did get
was " tinned rag " of a peculiarly damp and viscous
quality, tea that usually tasted of cockroaches, biscuit that
was so full of copra bugs we had to hammer it on the table
before eating it, an occasional tin of tasteless fruit (it ran out
very soon), and bread that was a nightmare, for the flour
went musty before we were out a week, and the unspeak-
able cook tried to disguise its taste with sugar. Board-of-
trade limejuice, which is a nauseous dose at best* we were
obliged by law to carry, and I think we must have run
rather near scurvy in the course of that long trip, for the
amount of the oily, drug-flavoured liquid that the mates
and myself used to drink at times, seemed to 'argue a
special craving of nature. But a la guerre comme a la
guerre and one does not take ship on a Pacific wind-
jammer expecting the luxuries of a P. and O.
We were not going direct to Maiden, having to call first
at Samoa and Mangaia. Three days of rough rolling
weather saw us in Apia, about which I have nothing to
say at present, since I paid a longer visit to Stevenson's
country later on. We had about forty native passengers
to take on here for the Cook Islands and Maiden. There
was nowhere to put them, but in the South Seas such
small inconveniences trouble nobody.
I am very strongly tempted here to tell about the big
gale that caught us the first night out, carried away our
lifeboat, topsail, topgallant, and main gaff, swamped the
unlucky passengers' cabin, and caused the Cingalese steward
to compose and chant all night long a litany containing
three mournful versicles : " O my God, this is too much
terrible ! O my'God, why I ever go to sea ! O my God,
I never go to sea again ! " But in tfie Pacific one soon
learns that sea etiquette makes light of such matters. So
the wonderful and terrible sights which I saw once or twice
that night, clinging precariously to anything solid near
the door of my cabin, and hoping that the captain would
not catch me out on deck, must remain undescribed.
214 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Nearly seven weeks were occupied by this northern trip
time for a mail steamer to go out from London to New
Zealand, and get well started on the way home again. We
were, of course, entirely isolated from news and letters ;
indeed, the mails and papers that we carried conveyed
the very latest intelligence to islands that had not had
a word from the outer world for many months. Our
native passengers, who were mostly going up to Maiden
Island guano works as paid labourers, evidently considered
the trip one wild scene of excitement and luxury. The
South Sea Islander loves nothing more than change, and
every new island we touched at was a Paris or an Ostend to
these (mostly) untravelled natives. Their accommodation
on the ship was not unlike that complained of by the waiter
in " David Copperfield." They " lived on broken wittles
and they slept on the coals." The Duchess carried benzoline
tins for the feeding of the futile little motor that worked
her in and out of port, and the native sleeping place was
merely the hold, on top of the tins.
" Do you mind the dynamite remaining under your
bunk ? " asked the ancient mariner, shortly after we left
Samoa.
" Under my bunk ? "
" Yes didn't you know it was there ? The explosives
safe is let into the deck just beneath the deck cabin. I'll
move it if you're nervous about it I thought I'd tell you,
anyways. But it's the best place for it to be, you see,
right amidships." And the ancient mariner, leaning his
six foot two across the rail, turned his quid, and spat into
the deep.
" What do we want with dynamite, anyhow ? " asked
the bewildered passenger, confronted with this new and
startling streak of local colour.
" We don't want none. The Cook Islands wants it for
reefs."
" Oh, leave it where it is I suppose it's all the same
in the end where it starts from, if it did blow up," says
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 215
the passenger resignedly. " What about the benzoline
in the hold, though ? "
" Every one's got to take chances at sea," says the
captain, easily. " The mates have orders to keep the
natives from smokin' in the hold at night."
And at midnight, when I slip out of my bunk to look
on and see what the weather is like (it has been threatening
all day), a faint but unmistakable odour of island tobacco
greets my nose, from the opening of the main hatch !
Benzoline, dynamite, natives smoking in the hold, one
big boat smashed, one small one left, forty native passen-
gers, five whites, and three hundred miles to the nearest
land !
Well, a la guerre comme a la guerre, and one must not
tell tales at sea. So I don't tell any, though tempted.
But I am very glad, a week later, to see the Cook Islands
rising up out of the empty blue again. We have had head
winds, we have been allowanced as to water, we are all
pleased to have a chance of taking in some fruit before we
start on the thousand miles' run to Maiden and above all,
we leave that dynamite here, which is a good thing ; for
really we have been putting rather too much strain on the
good nature of the " Sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
to keep guard o'er the life of poor Jack," this last week or
two.
If proof were wanted that the cherub's patience is about
at an end, our arrival at Mangaia furnishes it for we do
take fire after all, just a couple of hundred yards from shore !
It does not matter now, since half the natives of the island
are about the ship, and the case of explosives has just
been rowed off in our only boat, and the blaze is put out
without much trouble. But, two days ago !
Well, the sweet little cherub certainly deserved a rest.
Now the Duchess's bowsprit was pointed northwards,
and we set out on a thousand miles' unbroken run up to
216 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Maiden Island, only four degrees south of the Line. For
nine days we ploughed across the same monotonous plain
of lonely sea, growing a little duller every day, as our stores
of reading matter dwindled away, and our fruit and vege-
tables ran out, and the memory of our last fresh mess
became only a haunting, far-off regret. Squatting or
lying about the white-hot poop in the merciless sun which
burnt through our duck and cotton clothing, and scorched
the skin underneath, but was at least a degree better than
the choking Hades of a cabin below we used to torture
each other with reminiscences and speculations, such as
" They have real salt beef and sea-pie and lobscouse and
pea-soup, and things like that, every day on Robinson's
schooner ; no tinned rag and musty flour " ; or " How
many thousand miles are we now from an iced drink ? "
This last problem occupied the mates and myself for half
a morning, and made us all a great deal hotter than we were
before. Auckland was about 2,300 miles away, San
Francisco about 3,000 as far as we could guess. We
decided for Auckland, and discussed the best place to
buy the drink, being somewhat limited in choice by the
passenger's selfish insistence on a place where she could get
really good iced coffee. By the time this was settled, the
captain joined in, and informed us that we could get all
we wanted, and fresh limes into the bargain, only a thou-
sand miles away, at Tahiti, which every one had some-
how overlooked. Only a thousand ! It seemed nothing,
and we all felt (illogically) cheered up at the thought.
Late in the afternoon we came near attaining our wish
for a temperature of thirty-two degrees in rather an un-
expected way. The bottom of the Pacific generally
hovers about this figure, some miles below the burning
surface, which often reaches the temperature of an ordinary
warm bath ; and the Duchess had a fairly narrow escape
of going down to look for a cool spot without a return
ticket. A giant waterspout suddenly formed out of the
low- hanging, angry sky that had replaced the clear heat
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 217
of the morning. First of all, a black trunk like an
elephant's began to feel blindly about in mid-air, hanging
from a cloud. It came nearer and nearer with uncanny
speed, drawing up to itself as it came a colossal cone of
turbulent sea, until the two joined together in one enormous
black pillar, some quarter of a mile broad at the base,
and probably a good thousand feet high, uniting as it
did the clouds and the sea below. Across the darkening
sea, against the threatening, copper- crimson sunset,
came this gigantic horror, waltzing over leagues of torn-
up water in a veritable dance of death, like something
blind, but mad and cruel, trying to find and shatter our
fragile little ship. Happily, the dark was only coming,
not yet come ; happily, too, the wind favoured us, and we
were able to tack about and keep out of the way, dodging
the strangely human rushes and advances of the water-
giant with smartness and skill. At one time it came so
close that the elephant trunk now separately visible
again seemed feeling about over our heads, although
the captain afterwards said it had been more than three
hundred yards away and the immense maelstrom under-
neath showed us the great wall of whirling spindrift that
edged its deadly circle, as plain as the foam about our own
bows. Every one was quiet, cool, and ready ; but no
one was sorry when the threatening monster finally spun
away to leeward and melted into air once more. A water-
spout of this enormous size, striking a small vessel, would
snap off her masts like sticks of candy, kill any one who
happened to be on deck, and most probably sink the ship
with the very impact of the terrible shock.
" One doesn't hear much about ships being sunk by
waterspouts," obiected the sceptical passenger to this
last statement.
" Ships that's sunk by waterspouts doesn't come back
to tell the newspapers about it," said the captain darkly.
Life on a South Sea schooner is not all romance. For
the officers of the ship it is a very hard life indeed. Native
218 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
crews are the rule in the South Seas, and native crews
make work for every one, including themselves. Absolutely
fearless is the Kanaka, active as a monkey aloft, good-
natured and jolly to the last degree, but perfectly un-
reliable in any matter requiring an ounce of thought or
a pennyworth of discretion, and, moreover, given to shirk
work in a variety of ingenious ways that pass the wit of
the white man to circumvent. Constant and keen super-
vision while at sea, unremitting hurry and drive in port,
are the duties of a South Sea mate, coupled with plenty
of actual hard work on his own account. I have known
a case where a small schooner was leaking badly, many
days from port, and almost constant pumping was required.
The pump broke while in use ; and the watch, delighted
to be released, turned in at eight bells without having
done their spell, and without reporting the accident. The
water gained steadily, but that did not trouble them ;
and when the mate discovered the accident, and set them
to mend the pump at once, they were both surprised and
grieved !
" Watch and watch " is the rule on small sailing-vessels :
four hours on and four hours off, day and night, except
for the "dog watches," four to six and six to eight in
the evening, which create a daily shift in order that each
man may be on watch at a different time on successive
days. Always provided, of course, that the ship has
any watches at all ! I have sailed in a Pacific schooner
where the crew spent most of their time playing the
accordion and the Jew's harp, and slept peacefully all
night. In the daytime there was generally some one at
the wheel ; but at night it was usually lashed, and the
ship was let run, with all sails set, taking her chances of
what might come, every soul on board being asleep. One
night the cook came out of his bunk to get a drink from
the tank, and found the vessel taken aback. The whole
spirit of South Sea life breathes from the sequel. He
told nobody ! The galley was his department, not the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 219
sails ; so he simply went back to his bunk. In the morning
we fetched up off the northern side of an island we had
intended to - approach from the south ; having, strange
to say, somehow escaped piling our bones on the encircling
reef, and also avoided the misfortune of losing our masts
and getting sunk.
If there is a good deal of hard work on most schooners,
and something of risk on all, there is also plenty of adventure
and romance, for those who care about it. One seldom
meets an island skipper whose life would not furnish
materials for a dozen exciting books. Being cut off and
attacked by cannibals down in the dangerous western
groups ; swimming for dear life away from a boat just
bitten in two by an infuriated whale : driving one native
king off his throne, putting another on, and acting as prime
minister to the nation ; hunting up a rumour of a splendid
pearl among the pearling islands, and tracking down the
gem, until found and coaxed away from its careless owner
at one-tenth Sydney market prices these are incidents
that the typical schooner captain regards as merely the
ordinary kind of break to be expected in his rather mono-
tonous life. He does not think them very interesting
as a rule, and dismisses them somewhat briefly, in a yarn.
What does excite him, cause him to raise his voice and
gesticulate freely, and induce him to " yarn " relentlessly
for half a watch, is the recital of some thrilling incident
connected with the price of cargo or the claims made for
damaged stuff by some abandoned villain of a trader.
There is something worth relating in a tale like that, to his
mind !
The passenger on an island schooner learns very early to
cultivate a humble frame of mind. On a great steam
liner he is all in all. It is for him almost entirely that the
ships are built and run ; his favour is life or death to the
company. He is handled like eggs, and petted like a
canary bird. Every one runs to do his bidding ; he is
one of a small but precious aristocracy waited on hand
220 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
and foot by the humblest of serfs. On a schooner, how-
ever, he is ousted from his pride of place most completely
by the cargo, which takes precedence of him at every
point ; so that he rapidly learns he is not of nearly so
much value as a fat sack of copra, and he becomes lowlier
in mind than he ever was before. There is no special
accommodation for him, as a rule ; he must go where he
can, and take what he gets. If he can make himself
useful about the ship, so much the better ; every one will
think more of him, and he will get some useful exercise
by working his passage in addition to paying for it.
Here is a typical day on the Duchess.
At eight bells (8 a.m.) breakfast is served in the cabin.
The passenger's own cabin is a small deck-house placed
amidships on the main deck. The deck is filled up with
masses of cargo, interposing a perfect Himalayan chain
of mountains between the main deck and the poop. It
is pouring with tropical rain, but the big main hatch
yawns half open on one side, because of the native pas-
sengers in the hold. On the other side foams a squally
sea, unguarded by either rail or bulwark, since the cargo
is almost overflowing out of the ship. The Duchess is
rolling like a porpoise, and the passenger's hands are full
of mackintosh and hat-brim. It seems impossible to reach
the poop alive ; but the verb " have to " is in constant
use on a sailing-ship, and it does not fail of its magical
effect on this occasion. Clawing like a parrot, the pas-
senger reaches the cabin, and finds the bare-armed, bare-
footed mates and the captain engaged on the inevitable
" tin " and biscuits. There is no tea this morning, because
the cockroaches have managed to get into and flavour
the brew ; and the cabin will none of it. The captain
has sent word by the native steward that he will " learn "
the cook a strange threat that usually brings about at
least a temporary reform and is now engaged in knocking
the copra-bugs out of a piece of biscuit and brushing a
colony of ants off his plate. Our cargo is copra, and in
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 221
consequence the ship resembles an entomological museum
more than anything else. No centipedes have been found
this trip so far ; but the mate stabbed a big scorpion with
a sail- needle yesterday, as it was walking across the deck ;
and the cockroaches as large as mice, and much bolder
have fairly " taken charge." The captain says he does
not know whether he is steeping in the cockroaches' bunk,
or they in his, but he rather thinks the former, since the
brutes made a determined effort to throw him out on the
deck last night,, and nearly succeeded !
It grows very warm after breakfast, for we are far
within the tropics, and the Duchess has no awnings to
protect her deck. The rail is almost hot enough to blister
an unwary hand, and the great sails cast little shade, as
the sun climbs higher to the zenith. The pitch does not,
however, bubble in the seams of the deck, after the well-
known fashion of stories, because the Duchess, like most
other tropical ships, has her decks caulked with putty.
A calm has fallen a Pacific calm, which is not as highly
distinguished for calmness as the stay-at-home reader
might suppose. There is no wind, and the island we are
trying to reach remains tantalisingly perched on the
extreme edge of the horizon, like a little blue flower on
the rim of a crystal dish. But there is plenty of sea long
glittering hills of water, rising and falling, smooth and
foamless, under the ship, which they fling from side to
side with cruel violence. The great booms swing and
slam, the blocks clatter, the masts creak. Everything
loose in the cabins toboggans wildly up and down the
floor. At dinner, the soup which the cook has struggled
to produce, lest he should be " learned," has to be drunk
out of tin mugs for safety. Every one is sad and silent,
for the sailor hates a calm even more than a gale.
Bonitos come round the ship in a glittering shoal by-
and-by, and there is a rush for hooks and lines. One of
our native A.B.s produces a huge pearl hook, unbaited,
and begins to skim it lightly along the water at the end
222 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
of its line, mimicking the exact motions of a flying-fish
with a cleverness that no white man can approach.
Hurrah ! a catch ! A mass of sparkling silver, blue, and
green, nearly twenty pounds weight, is swung through
the air, and tumbled on deck. Another and another
follows ; we have over a hundred pounds weight of fish
in half an hour. The crew shout and sing for delight.
There are only seven of them and five of us, but there
will not be a scrap of that fish left by to-morrow, for all
the forecastle hands will turn to and cook and eat without
ceasing until it is gone ; after which they will probably
dance for an hour or two.
To every one's delight, the weather begins to cloud
over again after this, and we are soon spinning before
a ten-knot breeze towards the island, within sight of
which we have been aimlessly beating about for some
days, unable to get up. Our crew begin to make prepara-
tions. Tapitua, who is a great dandy, puts two gold
earrings in one ear, and fastens a wreath of cock's feathers
about his hat. Koddi (christened George) gets into a
thick blue woollen jersey (very suitable for Antarctic
weather), a scarlet and yellow pareo or kilt, and a pair of
English shoes, which make him limp terribly ; but they
are splendid squeakers, so Koddi is happy. (The Pacific
islander always picks out squeaking shoes if he can get
them, and some manufacturers even put special squeakers
into goods meant for the island trade.) Ta puts on three
different singlets a pink, a blue, and a yellow turning
up the edges carefully, so as to present a fine display of
layered colours, like a Neapolitan ice ; and gums the gaudy .
label off a jam tin about his bare brown arm, thus christen-
ing himself with the imposing title of " Our Real Rasp-
berry." Neo is wearing two hats and three neck-handker-
chiefs ; Oki has a cap with a " P. & O." ribbon, and Union
Steamship Company's jersey, besides a threepenny-piece in
the hollow of each ear. Truly we are a gay party, by the
time every one is ready to land.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 223
And now after our thousand mile run, we have arrived
at Maiden.
- Maiden Island lies on the border of the Southern Pacific,
only four degrees south of the equator. It is beyond
the verge of the great Polynesian archipelago, and stands
out by itself in a lonely stretch of still blue sea, very seldom
visited by ships of any kind. Approaching it one is
struck from far away by the glaring barrenness of the big
island, which is thirty-three miles in circumference, and
does not possess a single height or solitary tree, save one
small clump of recently planted cocoanuts. Nothing
more unlike the typical South Sea island could be imagined.
Instead of the violet mountain peaks, wreathed with flying
vapour, the lowlands rich with pineapple, banana, orange,
and mango, the picturesque beach bordered by groves of
feathery cocoanuts and quaint heavy-fruited pandanus
trees, that one finds in such groups as the Society,
Navigator's, Hawaiian, and Cook Islands, Maiden consists
simply of an immense white beach, a little settlement
fronted by a big wooden pier, and a desolate plain of low
greyish-green herbage, relieved here and there by small
bushes bearing insignificant yellow flowers. Water is
provided by great condensers. Food is all imported, save
for pig and goat flesh. Shade, coolness, refreshing fruit,
pleasant sights and sounds, there are none. For those
who live on the island, it is the scene of an exile which
has to be endured somehow or other, but which drags away
with incredible slowness and soul-deadening monotony.
Why does any one live in such a spot ? More especially,
why should it be tenanted by five or six whites and a
couple of hundred Kanakas, when many beautiful and
fertile islands cannot show nearly so many of either race ;
quite a large number, indeed, being altogether unin-
habited ? One need never look far for an answer in such
a case. If there is no comfort on Maiden Island, there
is something that men value more than comfort money.
For fifty-six years it has been one of the most valuable
224 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
properties in the Pacific. Out of Maiden Island have
come horses and carriages, fine houses, and gorgeous
jewellery, rich eating, delicate wines, handsome enter-
tainments, university education and expensive finishing
governesses, trips to the Continent, swift white schooners,
high places in Society, and all the other desirables of
wealth, for two generations of fortunate owners and their
families. Half-a-million hard cash has been made out of
it in the last thirty years, and it is good for another thirty.
All this from a barren rock in mid-ocean ! The solution
of the problem will at once suggest itself to any reader
who has ever sailed the Southern Seas guano !
This is indeed the secret of Maiden Island's riches.
Better by far than the discovery of a pirate's treasure-
cave, that favourite dream of romantic youth, is the dis-
covery of a guano island. There are few genuine treasure
romances in the Pacific, but many exciting tales that deal
with the finding and disposing of these unromantic mines
of wealth. Maiden Island itself has had an interesting
history enough. In 1848, Captain Chapman, an American
whaling captain who still lives in Honolulu, happened to
discover Maiden during the course of a long cruise. He
landed on the island, found nothing for himself and his
crew in the way of fruit or vegetables, but discovered the
guano beds, and made up his mind to sell the valuable
knowledge as soon as his cruise was over. Then he put to
sea again, and did not reach San Francisco for the best part
of a year. Meantime, another American, Captain English,
had found the island and its treasure. Wiser than Captain
Chapman, he abandoned his cruise, and hurried at once
to Sydney, where he sold the island for a big price to the
trading firm who have owned it ever since.
This is the history of Maiden Island's discovery. Time,
in the island, has slipped along since the days of the
Crimea with never a change. There is a row of little
tin-roofed, one-storeyed houses above the beach, tenanted
by the half-dozen white men who act as managers ; there
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 225
are big, barn-like shelters for the native labourers. Every
three years the managers end their term of service, and
joyfully return to the Company's great offices in Sydney,
where there is life and companionship, pleasant things
to see, good things to eat, newspapers every day, and
no prison bar of blue relentless ocean cutting off all the
outer world. Once or twice in the year one of the pretty
white island schooners sails up to Maiden, greeted with
shrieks and war-dances of joy ; discharges her freight of
forty or fifty newly indentured labourers, and takes away
as many others whose time of one year on the island has
expired. On Maiden itself nothing 'changes. Close up
to the equator, and devoid of mountains or even heights
which could attract rain, its climate is unaltered by the
passing season. No fruits or flowers mark the year by
their ripening and blossoming, no rainy season changes
the face of the land. News from the outer world comes
rarely ; and when it does come, it is so old as to have lost
its savour. Life on Maiden Island for managers and
labourers alike, is work, work, all_day long ; in the evening,
the bare verandah and the copper- crimson sunset, and
the empty prisoning sea. That is all.
The guano beds cover practically the whole of the
island. The surface on which one walks is hard, white,
and rocky. This must be broken through before the
guano, which lies a foot or two underneath, is reached.
The labourers break away the stony crust with picks, and
shovel out the fine, dry, earth-coloured guano that lies
beneath, in a stratum varying from one to three feet in
thickness. This is piled in great heaps, and sifted through
large wire screens. The sifted guano exactly resembling
common sand is now spread out in small heaps, and left
to dry thoroughly in the fierce sun. There must not be
any trace of moisture left that can possibly be dispersed ;
for the price of the guano depends on its absolute purity
and extreme concentration, and purchasers generally
make careful chemical tests of the stuff they buy.
8
226 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
When dried, the guano is stored away in an immense
shed near the settlement. If it has been obtained from
the pits at the other side of the island, eight miles away,
it will be brought down to the storehouse by means of one
of the oddest little railways in the world. The Maiden
Island railway is worked, not by steam, electricity, or
petrol, but by sail ! The S.E. trade-wind blows practically
all the year round on this island ; so the Company keep
a little fleet of land-vessels, cross-rigged, with fine large
sails, to convey the guano down to the settlement. The
empty carriages are pushed up to the pits by the workmen,
and loaded there. At evening, the labourers climb on the
top of the load, set the great sails, and fly down to the settle-
ment as fast as an average train could go. These " land-
ships " of Maiden are a bit unmanageable at times, and
have been known to jump the rails when travelling at
high speed, thus causing unpleasant accidents. But the
Kanaka labourers do not mind a trifle of that kind, and
not even in a S.E. gale would they condescend to take
a reef in the sails.
As it is necessary to push these railway ships on the
outward trip, the managers generally travel on a small
railway tricycle of the pattern familiar at home. This can
be driven at a fair speed, by means of arm levers. Across
the desolate inland plain one clatters, the centre of a disk
of shadowless grey-green, drenched clear of drawing and
colour by the merciless flood of white fire from above.
The sky is of the very thinnest pale blue ; the dark, deep
sea is out of sight. The world is all dead stillness and
smiting sun, with only the thin rattle of our labouring car,
and the vibration of distant dark specks above the
rookeries, for relief.
The dark specks grow nearer and more numerous, filling
the whole sky at last with the sweep of rushing wings
and the screams of angry bird voices. We leave the
tricycle on the rails and walk across the thin, 'coarse grass,
tangled with barilla plants, and low-growing yellow-
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 227
flowered shrubs, towards the spot where the wings flutter
thickest, covering many acres of the unlovely, barren
land with a perfect canopy of feathered life. This is the
bird by which the fortunes of Maiden have been made
the smaller man-o'-war bird. It is about the size of a duck,
though much lighter in build. The back is black, the
breast white, the bill long and hooked. The bird has an
extraordinarily rapid and powerful flight. It might more
appropriately be called the " pirate " than the " man-o'-
war " or " frigate " bird, since it uses its superior speed
to deprive other seabirds of the fish they catch, very seldom
indeed exerting itself to make an honest capture on its
own account. Strange to say, however, this daring
buccaneer is the meekest and most long-suffering of birds
where human beings are concerned. It will allow you
to walk all through its rookeries, and even to handle the
young birds and eggs, without making any remonstrance
other than a petulant squeal. The parents fly about
the visitors' heads in a perfect cloud, sweeping their wings
within an inch of our faces, screaming harshly, and looking
exceedingly fierce, with their ugly hooked bills and
sparkling black eyes. But that is their ordinary way of
occupying themselves ; they wheel and scream above the
rookery all day long, visited or let alone. Even if you
capture one, by a happy snatch (not at all an impossible
feat), you will not alarm the others, and your prisoner
will not show much fight.
The eggs lie all over the ground in a mass of broken
shells, feathers, and clawed -up earth. Those birds never
build nests, and only sit upon one egg, which is dirty white,
with brown spdts. The native labourers consider frigate-
bird eggs good to eat, and devour large numbers, but the
white men find them too strong. The birds are also
eaten by the labourers, but only on the sly, as this practice
is strictly forbidden, for the reason that illness generally
follows. The frigate-bird, it seems, is not very wholesome
eating.
8*
228 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
It is not in the insignificant deposits of these modern
rookeries that the wealth of the island lies, but in the
prehistoric strata underlying the stony surface crust already
mentioned. There are three strata composing the island
first the coral rock, secondly the guano, lastly the
surface crust. At one time, the island must have been the
home of innumerable myriads of frigate-birds, nesting all
over its circumference of thirty- three miles. The birds
now nest only in certain places, and, though exceedingly
thick to an unaccustomed eye, cannot compare with their
ancestors in number.
The schooner called on a Sunday, and so I could not
see the men at work. One of the managers, however,
showed me over the labourers' quarters, and told me all
about their life. There is certainly none of the " black-
birding " business about Maiden. Kidnapping natives
for plantation work, under conditions which amount to
slavery, is unfortunately still common enough in some
parts of the Pacific. But in the Cook Group, and Savage
Island, where most of the labourers come from, there is
no difficulty in obtaining as many genuine volunteers for
Maiden as its owners want. The men sign for a year's
work, at ten shillings a week, and board and lodging.
Their food consists of rice, biscuits, yams, tinned beef,
and tea, with a few cocoanuts for those who may fall sick.
This is " the hoigth of good 'atin " for a Polynesian, who
lives when at home bn yams, taro root, and bananas, with
an occasional mouthful of fish, and fowl or pig only on
high festival days.
The labourers' quarters are large, bare, shady buildings
fitted with wide shelves, on which the men spread their
mats and pillows to sleep. A Polynesian is never to be
divorced from his bedding ; he always carries it with him
when travelling, and the Maiden labourers each come to
the island provided with beautifully plaited pandanus
mats, and cushions stuffed with the down of the silk-
cotton tree. The cushions have covers of " trade " cottons,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 229
rudely embroidered by the owner's sweetheart or wife
with decorative designs, and affectionate mottoes.
From 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. are the hours of work, with an
hour and three-quarters off for meals. There is nothing
unpleasant about the work, as Maiden Island guano is
absolutely without odour, and apparently so dry and fine
when taken from the pits, that one wonders at the necessity
for further sifting and drying. Occasionally, however,
one of the workers develops a peculiar intestinal trouble
which is said to be caused by the fine dust of the pits. It
is nearly always fatal, by slow degrees. Our schooner
carried away one of these unfortunates a Savage Island
man who had come up to Maiden in full health and strength
only a few months before. He was the merest shadow or
sketch of a human being a bundle of bones clad in loose
brown skin, with a skull-like face, all teeth and eye-sockets
he could not stand or walk, only creep along the deck ;
and he was very obviously dying. Poor fellow ! he longed
for his own home above everything the cool green island,
sixteen hundred miles away, where there were fruit and
flowers in the shady valleys, and women's and children's
voices sounding pleasantly about the grassy village streets,
and his own little pand anus-thatched cottage, with his
" fafine " and the babies at the door, among the palms
and oranges above the sea. But the schooner had a two
months' voyage to make yet among the Cook and other
groups, before Savage Island could be reached ; and
Death was already lifting his spear to strike. We left
the poor fellow as a last chance on Penrhyn Island, a
couple of hundred miles away, hoping that the unlimited
cocoanuts he could obtain there might do him some good,
and that by some fortunate chance he might recover
sufficiently to take another ship, and reach Niue at last.
The guano of Maiden Island is supposed to be the best
in the world. It is extremely rich in superphosphates,
and needs no " doctoring " whatever, being ready to
apply to the land just as taken from the island. As the
w
230 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
company are obliged to guarantee the purity of what
they sell, and give an exact analysis of the constituents
of every lot, they keep a skilled chemist on the island,
and place a fine laboratory at his disposal. These analyses
are tedious to make, and require great accuracy, as a
mistake might cause a refusal of payment on the part of
the purchaser. The post of official chemist, therefore,
is no sinecure, especially as it includes the duties of dis-
penser as well, and not a little rough-and-ready doctoring
at times.
The temperature of the island is not so high as might
be expected from the latitude. It seldom goes above 90
in the shade, and is generally rendered quite endurable,
in spite of the merciless glare and total absence of shade,
by the persistent trade- wind. Mosquitoes are unknown,
and flies not troublesome. There are no centipedes,
scorpions, or other venomous creatures, although the
neighbouring islands (" neighbouring," in the Pacific,
means anything within three or four hundred miles) have
plenty of these unpleasant inhabitants. The white men
live on tinned food of various kinds, also bread, rice, fowls,
pork, goat, and goat's milk. Vegetables or fruit are a rare
and precious luxury, for the nearest island producing
either lies a thousand miles away. Big yams, weighing
a stone or two apiece and whitewashed to prevent decay,
are sent up from the Cook Islands now and then ; but the
want of really fresh vegetable food is one of the trials of
the island. It is not astonishing to hear that the salaries
of the Maiden officials are very high. A year or two on
the island is a good way of accumulating some capital,
since it is impossible to spend a penny.
The native labourers generally leave the island with the
greatest joy, glad beyond expression to return to their
sweet do-nothing lives at home. Why they undertake
the work at all is one of the many puzzles presented by
the Polynesian character. They have enough to eat and
enough to wear, without doing any work to speak of,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 231
while they are at home. Usually the motive for going
to Maiden is the desire of making twenty-five pounds or so
in a lump, to buy a bicycle (all South Sea Islanders have
bicycles, and ride them splendidly) or to build a stone
house. But in most cases the money is " spreed " away
in the first two or three days at home, giving presents to
everybody, and buying fine clothes at the trader's store.
So the product of the year's exile and hard work is
simply a tour among the islands in itself a strong attraction
a horribly hot suit of shoddy serge, with a stiff white
shirt, red socks, and red tie, bought up in Maiden from the
company out of the labourer's wages, and proudly worn on
the day the schooner brings the wanderer home to his
lightly clad relatives a bicycle, perhaps, which soon
becomes a scrap-heap ; or, possibly, a stone house which
is never lived in. The company has the labour that it
wants, and the money that the labour produces. Every
one is satisfied with the bargain, doubtless ; and the far-
away British farmer and market-gardener are the people
who are ultimately benefited.
CHAPTER XII
Pearl-fishing at Penrhyn The Beautiful Golden-Edge Perils
of the Pearl Diver A Fight for Life Visit to a Leper
Island A God-forsaken Place How they kept the Corpses
The Woman who sinned A Nameless Grave On to
Merry Manahiki The Island of Dance and Song Story
of the Leper and hisr Bird Good-bye to the Duchess.
A DAY or two after leaving Maiden we sighted
Penrhyn, lying five degrees further south, but for
some unexplained reason a very much hotter place than
Maiden. Penrhyn is an island that is famous all over
the South Sea world, and not unknown even in Europe.
Its pearl-shell and pearls, its strange, wild, semi-amphibious
natives, and its melancholy leper station, make it a marked
spot upon the Pacific map ; and a certain rather fictitious
value attaching to its stamps has made the name of the
island familiar to all stamp collectors at home. The
general impression conveyed to the voyager from kinder
and fairer islands is that Penrhyn is a place " at the back
of God -speed," a lonely, sultry, windy, eerie spot, desolate
and remote beyond description.
It is an atoll island, consisting merely of a strip of land
some couple of hundred yards in width, enclosing a splendid
lagoon nine miles 'long. The land is white coral gravel;
nothing grows on it but cocoanut and pandanus and a
few insignificant creepers. Fruit, vegetables, flowers,
there are none. The natives live entirely on cocoanut
and fish. They are nominally Christianised, but the veneer
of Christianity is wearing uncommonly thin in places.
They are reckless and daring to a degree, notable even
among Pacific Islanders. Any Penrhyn man will attack
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 233
a shark single-handed in its own element, and kill it with
the big knife he usually carries. They are, beyond com-
parison, the finest swimmers in the world ; it is almost
impossible to drown a Penrhyn Islander. He will swim
all day as easily as he will walk. You may often meet him
out fishing, miles from shore, without a boat, pushing in
front of him a small plank that carries his bait, lines, and
catch. Some of the fish he most fancies seldom come to
the surface. To catch these he baits his line, dives, and
swims about underneath the water for a minute or two
at a time, trailing the bait after him, and rising to the
surface as often as a fish takes it.
Of his pearl-diving exploits I shall speak later. The
deadly surf that breaks upon the outer reef has no terrors
for him. Among the small boys of the island there is a
favourite feat known as " crossing a hundred waves,"
which consists in diving through ninety-nine great rollers,
just as they are about to break, and rushing triumphantly
to shore on the back of the hundredth. The old warlike,
quarrelsome character of the islanders no doubt originally
due to scarcity of food still lurks concealed under an
outward show of civility. Penrhyn was the only South
Pacific Island I have visited where I did not care to walk
alone in the bush without my little American revolver.
The four or five white traders all keep firearms ready to
hand in their stores. There has been no actual trouble
of recent years, but there are narrow escapes from a free
fight every now and then, and every man must hold him-
self ready for emergencies. It is only eight years since
there was such an outbreak of hostilities in Penrhyn that
a man-of-war had to be sent up to protect the traders.
I was kindly offered the use of ^, house during the week
the Duchess spent in Penrhyn lagoon repairing sails and
rigging, and generally refitting after the stormy weather
that we had experienced on several occasions. But
Penrhyn is .rotten with undeclared leprosy, the water is
not above suspicion, and flies abound in myriads. So I
234 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
slept on the ship, and by day wandered about the desolate,
thin, sun-smitten woods of the island, or flew over the
green lagoon in one of the marvellously speedy pearling
sloops of the traders. These boats are about a couple of
tons each, with a boom as big', in proportion, as a grass-
hopper's leg. They are as manageable as a motor car,
and faster than most yachts. It is a wonderful sight to
see them taking cargo out to the schooners, speeding like
gulls over the water, and turning round in their tracks to
fly back again as easily as any gull might do. Pearling
was almost " off " at th^ time of the Duchess's visit, since
a good part of the lagoon was tabooed to allow the beds
to recover.
The pearls are rather a minor consideration at Penrhyn ..
The shell is of beautiful quality, large and thick, with the
much-valued golden edge ; but pearls are not plentiful
in it, and they are generally of moderate size. Some very
fine ones have been found, however ; and gems of ordinary
value can always be picked up fairly cheaply from the
divers. The Penrhyn lagoon is the property of the natives
themselves, who sell the shell and the pearls to white
traders. Christmas Island and some other Pacific pearling
grounds are privately owned, and in these places there
is a great deal of poaching done by the divers.
v The great buyers of pearls are the schooner captains.
There are three or four schooners that call at Penrhyn now
and then for cargo ; and every captain has a nose for
pearls like that of a trained hound for truffles. In the
Paumotus, about Penrhyn, Christmas Island, and the
Scillies (the Pacific Scillies, not those that are so familiarly
known to English readers), they flit from island to island,
following up the vagrant rumours of a fine pearl with
infinite tact and patience, until they run it to ground at
last, and (perhaps) clear a year's income in a day by a
lucky deal. San Francisco and Sydney are always ready
to buy, and the typical Pacific captain, if he is just a bit
of a buccaneer, is also a very keen man of business in the
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 235
most modern sense of the word, and not at all likely to be
cheated. Three native divers, famous for their deep-
water feats, came out in a pearling sloop with us one
afternoon, and gave a fine exhibition.
The bed over which we halted was about ninety feet
under the surface. Our three divers stripped to a
" pareo " apiece, and then, squatting down on the gunwale
of the boat with their hands hanging over their knees,
appeared to meditate. They were " taking their wind,"
the white steersman informed me. After about five
minutes of perfect stillness they suddenly got up and
dived off the thwart. The rest of us fidgeted up and
down the tiny deck, talked, speculated, and passed away
the time for what seemed an extraordinarily long period.
No one, unfortunately, had brought a watch ; but the
traders and schooner captains all agree in saying that the
Penrhyn diver can stay under water for full three minutes ;
and it was quite evident that our men were showing off for
the benefit of that almost unknown bird, the " wahine
papa." At last, one after another, the dark heads popped
up again, and the divers, each carrying a shell or two,
swam back to the boat, got on board, and presented their
catch to me with the easy grace and high-bred courtesy
that are the birthright of all Pacific islanders not at all
embarrassed by the fact that all the clothes they wore
would hardly have sufficed to make a Sunday suit for an
equal number of pigeons.
As a general rule, the divers carry baskets, and fill them
before coming up. Each man opens his own catch at
once, and hunts through the shell for pearls. Usually
he does not find any ; now and then he gets a small grey
pearl, 01 a decent white one, or a big irregular " baroque "
pearl of the " new art " variety, and once in a month of
Sundays he is rewarded by a large gleaming gem worth
several hundred pounds, for which he will probably get
only twenty or thirty.
Diving dresses are sometimes used in Penrhyn ; but
236 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
in such an irregular and risky manner that they are really
more dangerous than the ordinary method. The suit
is nothing but a helmet and jumper. No boots are worn,
no clothing whatever on the legs, and there are no
weights to preserve the diver's balance. It sometimes
happens though wonderfully seldom that the diver
trips, falls, and turns upside down, the heavy helmet
keeping him head-downwards until the air all rushes out
under the jumper, and he is miserably suffocated. The
air pump above is often carelessly worked in any case,
and there is no recognised system of signals, except the
jerk that means " Pull up."
" They're the most reckless devils on the face of the
earth," said a local trader. " Once let a man strike a,
good bed of shell, and he won't leave go of it, not for
Father Peter. He'll stick down there all day, grabbin'
away in twenty fathom or more till he feels paralysis
comin' on "
" Paralysis ? "
" Yes they gets it, lots of 'em. If you was to go
down in twenty fathom they can do five and twenty,
but anything over is touch and go and stay 'alf the day,
you'd come up 'owling like anything, and not able to move.
That's the way it catches them ; and then they must get
some one to come and rub them with sea water all night
long, and maybe they dies, and maybe they're all right
by morning. So then down they goes again, just the
same as ever. Sometimes a man'll be pulled up dead at
the end of a day. How does that happen ? Well, I
allow it's because he's been workin' at a big depth all
day, and feels all right ; and then, do you see, he'll find
somethin' a bit extra below of him, in a holler like, and
down he'll go after it ; and the extra fathom or two does
the trick.
" Sharks ? Well, I've seen you poppin' at them from
the deck of the Duchess, so you know as well as I do how
many there are. Didn't 'it them, even when the fin was
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 237
up ? That's because you 'aven't greased your bullet, I
suppose. You want to, if the water isn't to turn it aside.
But about the divers ? Oh ! they don't mind sharks,
none of them, when they've got the dress on. Sharks is
easy scared. You've only got to pull up your jumper a
bit, and the air bubbles out and frightens them to fits.
If you meet a big sting-ray, it'll run its spine into you,
and send the dress all to I mean, spoil the dress, so's
the water comes in, and maybe it'll stick the diver too.
And the big devilfish is nasty ; he'll 'old you down to a
rock ; but you can use your knife on him. The kara
mauaa is the worst ; the divers don't like him. He's
not as big as a shark, but he's downright wicked, and he's
a mouth on him as big as 'alf his body. If one comes
along, he'll bite an arm or leg off the man anyways, and
eat 'im outright if he's big enough to do it. Swordfish ?
Well, they don't often come into the lagoon ; it's the fishing
canoes outside they'll go for. Yes, they'll run a canoe and
a man through at a blow easy enough : but they don't
often do it. If you wants a canoe, I'll get you one ; and
you needn't mind about the swordfish. As like as not
they'll never come near you.
" About the divin' ? well, I think the naked divin' is
very near as safe as the machine, takin' all things. Worst
of it is, if a kara mauaa comes along, the diver can't
wait his time till it goes. No, he doesn't stab it not
inside the lagoon, because there's too many of them there,
and the blood would bring a whole pack about. He gets
under a ledge of rock, and 'opes it'll go away before his
wind gives out. If he doesn't, he gets eat."
Did Schiller, or Edgar Allan Poe ever conjure up a
picture more ghastly than that of a Penrhyn diver, caught
like a rat in a trap by some huge, man-eating shark, or
fierce kara mauaa crouching in a cleft of the over-
hanging coral, under the dark green gloom of a hundred
feet of water, with bursting lungs and cracking eyeballs,
while the threatening bulk of his terrible enemy looms
238 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
dark and steady, full in the road to life and air ? A
minute or more has been spent in the downward journey ;
another minute has passed in the agonised wait under
the rock. Has he been seen ? Will the creature move
away now, while there is still time to return ? The diver
knows to a second how much time has passed ; the third
minute is on its way ; but one goes up quicker than one
comes down, and there is still hope. Two minutes and a
half ; it is barely possible now, but The sentinel
of death glides forward ; his cruel eyes, phosphorescent
in the gloom, look right into the cleft where the wretched
creature is crouching, with almost twenty seconds of life
still left, but now not a shred of hope. A few more beats
of the labouring pulse, a gasp from the tortured lungs,
a sudden rush of silvery air bubbles, and the brown limbs
collapse down out of the cleft like wreaths of seaweed.
The shark has his own.
There is a " Molokai," or Leper Island, some two miles
out in the lagoon, where natives afflicted with leprosy are
confined. The Resident Agent one of the traders
broke the rigid quarantine of the Molokai one day so far
as to let me land upon the island, although he did not
allow me to approach nearer than ten or twelve yards to
the lepers, or to leave the beach and go inland to the houses
that were visible in the distance. Our boatmen ran the
sloop close inshore, and carried the captain and myself
through the shallow water, carefully setting us down on
dry stones, but remaining in the sea themselves. A little
dog that had come with the party sprang overboard, and
began swimming to the shore. It was hurriedly seized by
the scruff of its neck, and flung back into the boat. If
it had set paw on the beach it could never have returned,
but would have had to stay on the island for good.
Very lovely is the Molokai of Penrhyn ; sadly beautiful
this spot where so many wretched creatures have passed
away from death in life to life in death. As we landed,
the low golden rays of the afternoon sun were slanting
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 239
through the pillared palm stems and quaintly beautiful
pandanus fronds, across the snowy beach, and its trailing
gold-flowered vines. The water of the lagoon, coloured
like the gems in the gates of the Heavenly City, lapped
softly on the shore ; the perpetual trade wind poured
through the swaying trees, shaking silvery gleams from
the lacquered crests of the palms. In the distance,
shadowed by a heavy pandanus grove, stood a few low
brown huts. From the direction of these there came,
hurrying down to the beach as we landed, four figures
three men and a woman. They had put on their best
clothes when they saw the sloop making for the island.
The woman wore a gaudy scarlet cotton frock ; two of the
men had white shirts and sailor's trousers of blue dungaree
relics of a happier day, these, telling their own melancholy
tale of bygone years of freedom on the wide Pacific. The
third man wore a shirt and scarlet " pareo," or kilt.
Every face was lit up with delight at the sight of strangers
from the schooner ; above all, at the marvellous view of
the wonderful " wahine papa." Why, even the men who
lived free and happy on Penrhyn mainland did not get
the chance of seeing such a show once in a lifetime !
There she was, with two arms, and two legs, and a head,
and a funny gown fastened in about the middle, and the
most remarkable yellow shoes, and a ring, and a watch,
which showed her to be extraordinarily wealthy, and a
pale smooth face, not at all like a man's, and hair that was
brown, not black how odd ! It was evidently as good
as a theatre, to the lonely prisoners !
Bright as all the faces of the lepers were at that exciting
moment, one could not mistake the traces left by a more
habitual expression of heavy sadness. The terrible disease,
too, had set its well-known marks upon every countenance.
None of those who came out to see us had lost any feature ;
but all the faces had the gross, thickened, unhuman look
that leprosy stamps upon its victims. The woman kept
her arm up over her head, to hide some sad disfigurement
240 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
about her neck. One of the men walked slowly and
painfully, through an affection of the hip and leg. There
were nine lepers in all upon the island ; but the other five
either could not, or did not, wish to leave their huts,
and the agent refused to break the quarantine any further
than he had already done. What care the wretched
creatures are able to give one another, therefore, what
their homes are like, and how their lives are passed, I
cannot tell. Three of the lepers were accompanied by
their faithful dogs. They are all fond of pets, and must
have either a dog or a cat. Of course the animals never
leave the island. We exchanged a few remarks at the top
of our voices, left a case of oranges (brought up from the
Cook Islands, a thousand miles away), and returned to
our boat. The case of oranges was eagerly seized upon,
and conveyed into the bush.
" They will eat them up at once," I said.
" Not they," said one of our white men. " They'll
make them into orange beer to-night, and get jolly well
drunk for once in their miserable lives. Glad to see the
poor devils get a chance, say I." And so most im-
morally, no doubt said the " wahine papa " as well.
The lepers are fed from stores furnished by a small
Government fund ; and the trader who fulfils the very
light duties of Resident Government Agent generally
sends them over a share of any little luxury, in the way
of oranges, limes, or yams, that may reach the island.
None the less, their condition is most miserable, and one
cannot but regard it as a crying scandal upon the great
missionary organisations of the Pacific that nothing
whatever is done for the lepers of these northern groups.
The noble example of the late Father Damien, of Hawaii,
and of the Franciscan Sisters who still live upon the
Hawaiian Molokai, courting a martyr's death to serve
the victims of this terrible disease, seems to find no
imitators in the islands evangelised by British missionaries.
Godless, hopeless, and friendless, the lepers live and die
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 241
alone. That their lives are immoral in the last degree,
their religion, in spite of early teaching, almost a dead
letter, is only to be expected. Penrhyn is not alone in
this terrible scourge. Rakahanga, Manahiki, and
Palmerston all in the same part of the Pacific are
seriously affected by the disease. Palmerston I did not
see ; but I heard that there is one whole family of lepers
there, and some stray cases as well.
The island belongs to the half-caste descendants (about
150 in number) of Masters, a " beachcomber " of the early
days, who died a few years ago. These people are much
alarmed at the appearance of leprosy, and have segregated
the lepers on an island in the lagoon. They are anxious
to have them removed to the Molokai at Penrhyn, since
the family came originally from that island ; but no
schooner will undertake to carry them. In Rakahanga,
the lepers are not quarantined in any way, but wander
about among the people. There are only a few cases as
yet ; but the number will certainly increase. This may
also be said of Manahiki, for although very serious cases
are isolated there, the lepers are allowed, in the earlier
stages, to mix freely with every one else, and even to prepare
the food of a whole family. The New Zealand Govern-
ment, it is believed, will shortly pass a law compelling the
removal of all these cases to the Molokai at Penrhyn. No
Government, however, can alleviate the wretched condition
of these unfortunate prisoners, once sent to the island.
That remains for private charity and devotion.
A God-forsaken, God-forgotten-looking place is Penrhyn,
all in all. When sunset falls upon the great desolate*
lagoon, and the tall cocoanuts of the island stand up jet
black against the stormy yellow sky in one unbroken
rampart of tossing spears, -and the endless sweep of
shadowy beach is empty of all human life, and clear of
every sound save the long, monotonous, never-ceasing
cry of the trade wind in the trees, it needs but little
imagination to fancy strange creatures creeping through
242 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
the gloom of the forest strange, ghastly stories of murder
and despair whispering in the gathering night. Death
in every form is always near to Penrhyn ; death in the
dark waters of the lagoon, death from the white terror
of leprosy, and death at the hands of men but quarter
civilised, whose fingers are always itching for the ready
knife. And at the lonely sunset hour, when old memories
of the life and light of great cities, of welcoming windows
shining red and warm through grey, cold northern gloam-
ings come back to the wanderer's mind in vivid contrast,
the very wings of the " Shadow cloaked from head to
foot " seem to shake in full sight above these desolate
shores. Yet, perhaps, the intolerable blaze of full noon
upon the windward beaches strikes a note of even deeper
loneliness and distance. The windward side of Penrhyn
is uninhabited ; the sea that breaks in blinding white foam
upon the untrodden strand, wreathed with trailing vines
of vivid green, is never broken by a sail. The sun beats
down through the palm and pandanus leaves so fiercely
that the whole of the seaward bush is but a shadeless blaze
of green fire. Nothing stirs, nothing cries ; the earth is
silent, the sea empty ; and a barrier of thousands of long
sea miles, steadily built up, day by day, through many
weeks, and only to be passed again by the slow demolishing,
brick by brick, of the same great wall, lies between us and
the world where people live. Here there is no life, only
an endless dream ; not as in the happy southern islands,
a gentle sunrise dream of such surpassing sweetness that
the sleeper asks nothing more than to dream on thus for
ever ; but a dark-hour dream of loneliness, desolation,
and utter remoteness, from which the dreamer cannot
awaken, even if he would. Why do men white men,
with some ability and some education live in these far-
away infertile islands ? There is no answer to the problem,
even from the men themselves. They came, they stayed,
they do not go away whv. they do not know. That is
all.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 243
The land extent of Penrhyn is only three square miles,
though the enclosed lagoon is a hundred. The population
is little over four hundred souls ; there are three or four
white traders, as a rule. There is no resident white
missionary. The island is one of those that have been
annexed by New Zealand, and is therefore British property.
It is governed by the Resident Commissioner of the Cook
group, who visits it about once a year.
Until two or three years ago, the Penrhyn Islanders
used to keep their dead in the houses, hanging up the
corpse, wrapped in matting, until ' it was completely
decayed. This hideous practice was put an end to by
the Representatives of British Government, much to the
grief of the natives, who found it hard to part with the
bodies of their friends, and leave them away in the grave-
yard they were bidden to choose. As the best substitute
for the old practice, they now build little houses, some
four feet high, over the tombs of their friends, and live
in these houses for many months after a death, sitting
and sleeping and even eating on the tomb that is covered
by the thatch or iron roof of the grave-house. The grave-
yard is in consequence a strange and picturesque sight,
almost like a village of some pigmy folk. A few plain
concrete graves stand above the remains of white men
who have died in the island, and one headstone is carved
with the initials not the name of a woman. There is
a story about that lonely grave ; it was told to me as I
lingered in the little " God's Acre " at sunset, with the
light falling low between the palms and the lonely evening
wind beginning to wail from the sea.
The woman was the wife of a schooner captain, a man
of good family and connections, who liked the wild roving
life of the Pacific, yet managed to retain a number of
acquaintances of his own class in Auckland and Tahiti.
His wife was young and handsome; and had many friends
of her own. On one of the schooner's visits to Penrhyn,
the man was taken suddenly ill, and died in a very short
244 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
time, leaving his wife alone. It seems that at first she
was bewildered by her loss, and stayed on in the island,
not knowing what to do, but before many months she
had solved the problem after a fashion that horrified all
the whites she married a Penrhyn native 1 good-looking
and attractive, but three-quarters savage, and left the
island with him.
Several children were born to the pair, but they were given
to the husband's people. At last he took a native partner,
and deserted his English wife. She left the islands,
and went down to Auckland ; but her story had travelled
before her, and Auckland society closed its doors. To
Tahiti, where morals are easy, and no one frowns upon
the union, temporary or permanent, of the white man and
the brown woman, she went, hoping to be received as
in former days. But even Papeete, " the sink of the
Pacific," would have none of the white woman who had
married a brown man. Northwards once more, to lonely
Penrhyn, the broken-hearted woman went, wishing only
to die, far from the eyes of her own world that had driven
her out. A schooner captain, who called there now and
then, cast eyes upon her for she was still young, and
retained much of her beauty and asked her, at last, if she
would become his wife, and so redeem in some degree her
position ; but she had neither heart nor wish to live longer,
so she sent the kindly sailor away, and soon afterwards
closed her eyes for ever on the blue Pacific and the burning
sands, the brown lover who had betrayed her, and the
white lover who came too late. The traders buried her,
and kindly left her grave without a name ; only the initials
of that which she had borne in her first marriage, and the
date of her death. So, quiet and forgotten at last, lies
in lonely Penrhyn the woman who sinned against her
race and found no forgiveness.
It was a relief to leave Penrhyn, with all its gloomy
associations, and see the schooner's head set for. the open
sea and merry Manahiki. But we seemed to have brought
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 245
ill-luck away with us, for there was what the captain called
" mean weather " before we came within hail of land again,
and the Duchess got some more knocking about.
It was on account of this that Neo, our native bo'sun,
hit an innocent A.B. over the head with a belaying-pin
one afternoon, and offered to perform the same service
for any of the rest of the crew who might require it. The
men had been singing mission hymns as they ran about the
deck pulling and hauling not exactly out of sheer piety,
but because some of the hymns, with good rousing choruses,
made excellent chanties. They were hauling to the tune
of " Pull for the shore, brothers ! " when a squall hit the
ship, and out of the fifteen agitated minutes that followed,
the Duchess emerged minus her jib-boom. When things
had quieted down, Neo started to work with the belaying-
pin, until he was stopped, when he offered, as a sufficient
explanation, the following :
" Those men, they sing something made bad luck, I
think, jib-boom he break. Suppose they sing, ' Pull for
'em shore ' some other time, I break their head, that I
telling them ! "
The next time a chanty was wanted, " Hold the Fort ! "
took the place of the obnoxious tune, and Neo's lessons
were not called for.
And so, in a day or two we came to Rakahanga and
Manahiki (Reirson and Humphrey Islands), and stopped
there for another day or two, before we spread our wings like
the swallows, to fleet southward again.
It was certainly globe-trotting, not proper travelling.
To flit from group to group, taking in cargo, and then
hurrying off again, is the way not to understand the places
one sees, and I was more than half inclined to leave the
Duchess here, and stop over for a month or two on the
chance of another schooner turning up. But the dinner
that the solitary trader ate when he came on board made
me change my mind. He looked like a man half-famished,
and he certainly acted like one. There was hardly a
246 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
thing on the island to eat at present, he said ; the natives
had only enough fish for themselves, and the turtle weren't
coming and his stores were almost out, and he had been
living on biscuit and cocoanuts for weeks. There was
leprosy in both islands, and one did not dare to touch native
pork or fowl. On the whole, I thought I would be con-
tented to " globe-trot," on this occasion, and see what I
could in a day or two.
The islands are about twenty-five miles apart, arid very
much like one another. They each own an area of about
two square miles, and a population of some four hundred
natives. And there is nothing in the whole Pacific prettier.
Coming up to Manahiki, one sees first of all a snowy shore
and a belt of green tossing palms, just like any other island.
As the ship coasts along,- however, making for the village,
the palm-trees break and open out here and there, and
through the break one sees paradise ! There is a great
sheet of turquoise-green water inside, and on the water an
archipelago of the most exquisite little plumy, palmy islets,
each ringed round with its own pearly girdle of coral sand.
Every gap in the trees frames in a picture more lovely than
the last and, as we approach the village, the dainty
little brown island canoes that all the Pacific wanderers
know so well, begin to dot the jewel- bright surface of the
inner lake, and gleams of white and rose and scarlet dresses,
worn by the rowers of the tiny craft, sparkle on the water
like gems. At last the vessel comes to anchor before a
wide white, sloping beach, with brown-roofed huts clustering
behind, and we reached merry Manahiki.
The island has long enjoyed a reputation for peculiar
innocence and simplicity, coupled with piety of a marked
description. Well, one does not care to destroy any one's
illusions, so the less said about Manahiki's innocence and
simplicity the better. The islanders are, at all events, a
kindly and a cheerful people, and their home is the neatest
and best kept island in the Pacific. A palm-bordered
road of finest white sand, beautifully kept, and four miles
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 247
long, runs without a bend or break from one end of the
island to the other this portion of the atoll forming a
separate island, and containing most of the scanty popu-
lation. The village stands about midway a collection
of quaint little houses deeply thatched with plaited pan-
danus leaf, and walled with small, straight saplings set
side by side and admitting a good deal of light and air.
The houses are unwindowed as a rule. Rakahanga, the
sister island, is extremely like Manahiki in formation and
architecture. It, however, enjoys the additional advantage
of a jail, which is built of crossed saplings, looks much like
a huge bird-cage, and certainly could not confine any one
who made the smallest attempt to get out. But, as
criminals are unknown in these islands, and petty offences
are visited by fine instead of imprisonment, the jail is
not expected to do real service, being merely a bit of
" swagger," like the white- washed stone houses possessed
by one or two wealthy natives, who, Pacific fashion,
never think of living in them.
Within, the ordinary houses are extremely simple.
The floor of white coral gravel reflects and intensifies
the soft diffused light that enters through the walls. There
may be a native bedstead, laced across with. " sinnet "
plaited cocoanut fibre and provided "with a gay patch-
work quilt, and a few large soft mats of pandanus leaf,
ingeniously split, dried, and plaited. There will certainly
be a pile of camphor-wood trunks, containing the clothes
of the household ; a dozen or so cocoanut shells, for drinking
and eating purposes ; a few sheath-knives, and a small
quantity of much-cherished crockery. In a corner, you
may find a heap of flying-fish ready cleaned for baking
in the oven-pit outside, and a number of green, unhusked
cocoanuts, for drinking. You may possibly see some ship's
biscuits, too, bought from the one white resident of the
island, a trader ; and there will also be some lumps of
white, soft pith, shaped like large buns the " sponge " or
kernel of the old cocoanut, which grows and fills up the
248 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
shell after the water has dried away, and the nut commenced
to sprout. But there will be no bananas, no oranges, no
mangoes, granadillas, pineapples, yam, taro or ti root,
bread-fruit or maupei chestnuts, as in the fertile volcanic
islands. Manahiki is a coral island, pure and simple,
and has no soil at all, nothing but sand and white gravel,
out of which the cocoa- palm and a few -small timber trees
spring, in a manner that seems almost miraculous to those
accustomed to the rich, fertile soil of Raratonga or Tahiti.
Cocoanut and fish are the food of the Manahikian, varied by
an occasional gorge of turtle-meat, and a feast of pig and
fowl on very great occasions. There is, therefore, not
much work to do in the island, and there are few distractions
from the outside world, since trading schooners only call
two or three times a year at best. Some copra-drying is
done and a few toy canoes, baskets, and other curiosities
are made, to find a precarious sale when a schooner comes
in and the captain is inclined to speculate.
But time never hangs heavy on the Manahikian's hands.
He is the most accomplished dancer and singer in the
whole South Pacific, and the island is inordinately vain
of this distinction. All South Sea islanders sing constantly,
but in Manahiki, the tunes are much sweeter and more
definite than in most other islands ; and the impromptu
variations of the " seconds " are really wonderful. The
voices, too, are exceptionally good. The women's are
rather hard and piercing, but those of the men are often
magnificent. The time is as perfect as if beaten out by a
metronome, and false notes are almost unknown.
Men and women alike seem incapable of fatigue when
singing. The mere white man will feel tired and husky
after going through the choruses of The Messiah or The
Creation. A Manahikian, if he were acquainted with ora-
torio music, would run through both, ///, and then " take
on " Tannhduser, following up with another Wagnerian
opera, and -perhaps a cantata thrown in. By this time, it
would be dusk, and the chorus would probably stop to
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 249
eat a cartload of cocoanuts before beginning on the whole
Nibelungen Ring cycle for the night. About midnight the
Resident Agent, a clever half-caste, who has European
ideas about the value of sleep, would probably send out
the village policeman with a stick to induce the singers
to go to bed ; and, quite unfatigued, they would rise up from
their cross-legged squatting posture on the ground, and
go, remonstrant, but compelled.
Happily for the Resident Agent and the trader, however,
European music is not known in Manahiki, and when a
singing fit seizes the people, they can generally be stopped
after about a day, unless somebody has composed something
very new and very screaming. If the two ends of the
village have begun one of their musical competitions,
there may also be difficulty in bringing it to a period ;
for the rival choruses will sing against each other with
cracking throats and swelling veins, hour after hour, till
both sides are completely exhausted.
Dancing, however, is the Manahikian's chief reason for
existing. The Manahikian dances are infinitely superior
to those of most other islands, which consist almost alto-
gether of a wriggle belonging to the danse du venire family,
and a little waving of the arms. The Manahiki dance
has the wriggle for its groundwork, but there are many steps
and variations. Some of the steps are so rapid that the
eye can hardly follow them, and a camera shutter which
works up to T in of a second does not give a sharp result.
The men are ranged in a long row, with the women opposite ;
there is a good deal of wheeling and turning abotit in brisk
military style, advancing, retreating, and spinning round.
The men dance very much on the extreme tips of their
toes (they are, of course, barefooted) and keep up this
painful posture for an extraordinary length of time. Every
muscle in the whole body seems to be worked in the
" fancy " steps ; and there is a remarkable effect of
general dislocation, due to turning the knees and elbows
violently out and in.
250 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
The women, like Miss Mercy Pecksniff, seem chiefly to
favour the " shape and skip " style of locomotion. There
is a good deal of both these, a great deal of wriggle, and
plenty of arm action, about their dancing. They
manreuvre their long, loose robes about, not at all un-
gracefully, and do some neat step-dancing, rather inferior,
however, to that of the men.
Both men and women dress specially for the dance, so
the festival that was organised to greet our arrivals took
some time to get up, as all the beaux and belles of the
village had to hurry home and dress. The women put
on fresh cotton loose gowns, of brilliant pink, purple,
yellow, white and green, oiled their hair with cocoanut
oil scented with the fragrant white tiere flower, and hung
long chains of red and yellow berries about their necks.
About their waists they tied the dancing girdle, never
worn except on these occasions, and made of twisted
green ferns. The men took off their cool, easy everyday
costume, of a short cotton kilt and gay coloured singlet,
and attired themselves in shirts and heavy stuff trousers
(bought from the trader at enormous expense, and con-
sidered the acme of smartness). Both sexes crowned
themselves with the curious dancing headdress, which
looks exactly like the long-rayed halo of a saint, and is
made by splitting a palm frond down the middle, and
fastening it in a half-circle about the back of the head.
The music then struck up and the dancers began to
assemble. The band consisted of two youths, one of whom
clicked a couple of sticks together, while the other beat a
drum. This does not sound attractive ; but as a matter
of fact, the Manahiki Castanet and drum music is curiously
weird and thrilling, and arouses a desire for dancing even
in the prosaic European. On board our schooner, lying
half a mile from shore, the sound of the measured click and
throb used to set every foot beating time on deck, while the
native crew frankly dropped whatever they were at, and
began to caper wildly. Close at hand, the music is even
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 251
more impressive ; no swinging waltz thundered out by
a whole Hungarian band gets " into the feet " more
effectively than the Manahiki drum.
A much-cherished possession is this drum. It is carved
and ornamented with sinnet, and topped with a piece of
bladder ; it seems to have been hollowed out of a big log,
with considerable labour. The skill of the drummers is
really remarkable. No drumsticks are used, only fingers,
yet the sound carries for miles. While drumming, the
hands rise and fall so fast as to lose all outline to the eye ;
the drummer nods and beats with his foot in an ecstasy
of delight at his own performance ; the air is full of the
throbbing, rhythmical, intensely savage notes. The
dancers at first hesitate, begin and stop, and begin again,
laugh and retreat and come forward undecidedly. By-
and-by the dancing fervour seizes one or two ; they com-
mence to twirl and to stamp wildly, winnowing the air with
their arms. Others join in, the two rows are completed,
and Manahiki is fairly started for the day. Hour after
hour they dance, streaming with perspiration in the burning
sun, laughing and singing and skipping. The green fern
girdles wither into shreds of crackling brown, the palm
haloes droop, the berry necklaces break and scatter, but oil
they go. The children join in the dance now and
then, but their small frames weary soon ; the parents are
indefatigable.
Perhaps both ends of the settlement are dancing ; if
that is so, the competitive element is sure to come in sooner
or later, for the feeling between the two is very like that
between the collegers and oppidans at Eton, each despising
the other heartily, and ready on all occasions to find a
cause for a fight. They will dance against each other now,
striving with every muscle to twinkle the feet quicker,
stand higher on the tips of the toes, wriggle more snakily,
than their rivals. Evening comes, and they are still
dancing. With the night, the dance degenerates into
something very like an orgy, and before dawn, to avcid
252 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
scandal, a powerful hint from the native pastor and the
agent causes the ball to break up.
Do the dancers go to bed now, lie down on their piled up
sleeping mats, and compose themselves to slumber ? By
no means. Most of them get torches, and go out on the
reef in the dark to spear fish. Cooking fires are lighted,
and there is a hurried gorge in the houses ; everywhere,
in the breaking dawn, one hears the chuck-chuck of the
husking-stick preparing cocoanuts, and smells the savoury
odour of cooking fish. The dancers have not eaten for
at least twenty-four hours, perhaps more. But this feast
does not last long, for just as the sun begins to shoot long
scarlet rays up through the palm trees, some one begins
to beat the drum again. Immediately the whole village
pours out into the open, and the dance is all on again,
as energetic as ever. The trading schooner is three weeks
over-due, and the copra on which the island income depends
is not half dried ; there is not a fancy basket or a pandanus
hat ready for the trader ; the washing of every house is
hopelessly behind, and nobody has had a decent meal since
the day before yesterday. No matter : the Manahikians
are dancing, and it would take an earthquake to stop them.
Late in the second day, they will probably give out and
take a night's rest. But it is about even chances that
they begin again the next morning. In any case, no day
passes in Manahiki or Rakahanga. without a dance in the
evening. Regularly at sunset the drum begins to beat,
the fern girdles are tied on (relics, these, of heathen days
when girdles of grass or fern were all that the dancers
wore), and palm haloes are twisted about the glossy black
hair, and the island gives itself up to enjoyment for the
evening.
There is a dancing-master in Manahiki, a most important
potentate, who does nothing whatever but invent new
dances, and teach the youth of the village both the old
dances and the new.
We stopped overnight at the island, so I had time for
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 253
a good walk along the beautiful coral avenue, which is
indeed one of the loveliest things in the island world.
It was Sunday, and all the natives were worshipping in
the exceedingly ugly and stuffy concrete church, under
the guidance of the native pastor, so I had the place almost
to myself. Far away from everywhere, sitting in a ruinous
little hut under the trees by the inner lagoon, I found a
lonely old man, crippled and unable to walk. He was
waiting until the others came back from church, staring
solemnly into the lagoon the while, and playing with a
heap of cocoanut shells. By-and-by he would probably
rouse up, drag himself into the hut, and busy himself
getting ready the dinner for the family against their return
home, for he was an industrious old man, and liked to make
himself useful so far as he could, and his relatives were very
glad of what small services he could render in washing
and cooking.
What was the matter with the poor old man ? He
was a leper !
That is the way of the islands, and no white rule can
altogether put a stop to it. The half-caste who acts as
agent for the Government of New Zealand had hunted
out a very bad case of leprosy a year or two before, and
insisted on quarantining it in a lonely part of the bush.
This was all very well, but the leper had a pet cock, which
he wanted to take with him, and the agent's heart was not
hard enough to refuse. Now the leper, being fed without
working, and having nothing to do, found the time hanging
heavy on his hands, so he taught the cock to dance report
says, to dance the real Manahiki dances and the fame of
the wondrous bird spread all over the island, and as far as
Rakahanga, so that the natives made continual parties
to see the creature perform, and quarantine became a dead
letter. Still the agent had not the heart to take the cock
away, but when he saw the leper's end was near, he watched,
and as soon as he heard the man was dead, he hurried to
the quarantined hut, set it on fire, and immediately
254 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
slaughtered the cock. An hour later, half the island was
out at the hut, looking for the bird but they came too
late.
We have been two days at merry Manahiki, and the
cargo is in, and the Captain has ordered the Duchess
looking shockingly cock-nosed without her great jib-
boom to be put under sail again. As the booms begin
to rattle, and the sails to rise against the splendid rose and
daffodil of the Pacific sunset, Shalli, our Cingalese steward,
leans sadly over the rail, listening to the thrilling beat
of the drum that is just beginning to throb across the still
waters of the lagoon, now that evening and its merry-
making are coming on once more.
" He plenty good place, that," says Shalli mournfully.
" All the time dancing, singing, eating, no working
he all same place as heaven. O my God, I plenty wish I
stopping there, I no wanting any heaven then ! "
With this pious aspiration in our ears, we spread our
white wings once more for the last time. Raratonga
lies before us now, and from Raratonga the steamers
go, and the mails and tourists come, and the doors of the
great world open for us again. So, good-bye to the life of
the schooner.
CHAPTER XIII
The Last of the Island Kingdoms Fashions in Nukualofa
The King who was shy His Majesty's Love Story Who
got the Wedding-Cake ? The Chancellor goes to Jail
Bungalow Housekeeping The Wood of the Sacred Bats
By the Tombs of the Tui-Tongas A " Chief " Kava-party
The Waits ! Mariner's Cave The Cave of the Swallows
To Samoa.
SOME weeks afterwards, after a round of three thou-
sand miles, I found myself in Tonga, better known as
the Friendly Islands. The distance from the Cook Group
was only one thousand or less, as the crow flies, but the
steamers flew down to Auckland, and then back again,
which naturally added to the journey. Pacific travel is
a series of compromises. The British Resident of Niue,
which is only three hundred miles from Tonga, wanted to
get to the latter place about that time, and when I met him
at Nukualofa, the Tongan capital, he had had to travel
two thousand four hundred miles to reach it ! But no
one is ever in a hurry, under the shade of the cocoanut
tree.
Who has heard of Tongatabu ? who knows where the
" Friendly Islands " are ? You will not find them very
readily in the map, but they are to be found nevertheless,
about one thousand miles to the north-east of New Zealand.
And if you take the steamer that runs every month from
Auckland to Sydney, touching at the " Friendly " or
Tongan Group, on the way, you will find yourself, in four
days, set down on the wharf of Nukualofa, the capital of
the island of Tongatabu, and the seat of the oddest, most
comic-opera-like monarchy that the world ever knew.
256 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
Thirty years ago even twenty the Great South Seas
were scattered over with independent island states, ruled
by monarchs who displayed every degree of civilisation,
from the bloodthirsty monster, Thakomban of Fiji and
Jibberik, the half-crazy tyrant of Majuro, up to such
Elizabeths of the Pacific as Liluokalani of Hawaii, and
Queen Pomare of Tahiti. Now there is but one island
kingdom left ; but one native sovereign, who still e>ts on
his throne unembarrassed by the presence of a British
Resident, who is ruler in all but name. Hawaii has fallen
to America ; France has taken the Marquesas and Tahiti ;
England has annexed the Cook Islands and dethroned the
famous Queen Makea ; Germany and America have
partitioned Samoa between them ; the rich archipelago
of Fiji has been added to the British Colonies. This
accounts for almost all of the larger and richer island
groups, distinguished by a certain amount of original
civilisation, and leaves only one unseized Tonga, or the
Friendly Islands, over which England has maintained a
protectorate since 1900.
The Tongan Archipelago was discovered by Captain
Cook in 1777, and by him named the " Friendly Islands,"
on account of the apparently friendly disposition of the
natives. He sailed away from the group unaware that
beneath their seemingly genial reception, the Tongans
had been maturing a plot to murder him and seize his
ship. Treachery, it is true, has never been an essential
part of -the Tongan character ; but they are, and always
have been, the most warlike of all Pacific races, and it is
probable that they thought the character of the deed
excused by the necessities of a military race who feared
injury from a superior power.
After Cook's visit the world heard very little of Tonga
until 1816, when Mariner's "Tonga Islands," the history
of a young sailor's captivity among the natives of the
group, fairly took the reading world by storm. It is
still a classic among works of travel and adventure. Since
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 257
the islands were converted to Christianity their history
has been uneventful. One king George Tubou I.
reigned for seventy years, and only died at last, aged
ninety-seven, of a chill contracted from, his invariable
custom of bathing in the sea at dawn ! His great-grand-
son, George Tubou II. succeeded, inheriting through his
mother's side, as the Tongan succession follows the
matriarchal plan. It is this king aged thirty-four,
six feet four in height, and about twenty-seven stone
weight who now sits upon the last throne of the Island
Kings, and rules over the only independent state left in
the Pacific.
When Britain assumed a Protectorate over Tonga
in 1900, it was done simply to prevent any other nation
annexing the rich and fertile group, with its splendid
harbour of Vavau which lay so dangerously near Fiji.
The Germans, who had maintained a kind of half-and-
half Protectorate for some time, ceded their rights in
exchange for those possessed by England in Samoa, and
Tonga then became safe from the incursions of any foreign
nation whose interests, trading and territorial, might
be hostile to those of Britain.
Perhaps as a consequence of all those negotiations, the
Tongans have a high opinion of their own importance.
When the war between China and Japan broke out, Tonga
politely sent word to Great Britain that she intended to
remain neutral, and not take any part in the affair. Great
Britain's reply, I regret to say, is not recorded.
The Tongans are a Christianised and partially civilised,
if a coloured, race, numbering about 20,000. They are
of a warm brown in hue, with dense black, wiry hair
(usually dyed golden red with lime juice), tall, well-made
frames, and immense muscular development. As a nation,
they are handsome, with intelligent faces, and a dignity
of pose and movement that is sometimes unkindly called
the " Tongan swagger." In education, many of them
would compare favourably with the average white man,
9
258
so far as mere attainments go ; although a course of
instruction at the local schools and colleges, amounting
to very nearly the standard of an English " matricu-
lations," does not prevent its recipient from believing
firmly in the holiness of the sacred Tongan bats, feeding
himself with his fingers, and walking about his native
village naked as Adam, save for a cotton kilt.
There is not only a King in Tonga, but a real palace,
guards of honour, a Parliament, a Prime Minister, a
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a large number of public
officials. All these are Tongan natives. The king's
guards are apt to make an especially vivid impression
upon the newcomer, as he walks up the wharf, and sees
the scarlet-coated sentry pacing up and down opposite
the guard-room, with his fellows, also smartly uniformed,
lounging inside. If the stranger, however, could have
witnessed the scene on the wharf as soon as the steamer
was signalled the sudden running up of a dozen or two
of guards who had been amusing themselves about the
town in undress uniform (navy-blue kilt, red sash, buff
singlet), -the scrambling and dressing cor am publico on
the grass, getting into trousers, boots, shirt, tunic, forage
cap, and the hurried scuffle to get ready in time, and
make a fine appearance to the steamer folk he might
think rather less of Tonga's military discipline.
Beyond the wharf lies the town, straggling over a good
mile of space, and consisting of a few main streets and
one or two side alleys, bordered by pretty verandahed,
flowery houses. The pavement is the same throughout
green grass, kept short by the constant passing of bare
feet. There are a good many trading stores, filled with
wares suited to native tastes gaudy prints, strong per-
fumes, cutlery, crockery, Brummagem jewellery. The
streets are busy to-day busy for Nukualofa, that is.
Every now and then a native passes, flying by on a
galloping, barebacked horse, or striding along the grass
with the inimitable Tongan strut ; for it is steamer day,
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 259
and the monthly Union steamer boat is the theatre, the
newspaper, the society entertainment, the luxury-provider
of all the archipelago. On the other twenty-nine or thirty
days of the month, you may stand in the middle of a main
street for half an hour at a time, and not see a single
passer-by, but steamer day galvanises the whole island
into life.
The sand of the beach beside the wharf is as white as
snow ; it is pulverised coral from the reef, nothing else.
Great fluted clam-shells, a foot long and more, lie about the
strand, among the trailing pink-flowered convolvulus
vines that wreathe the shore of every South Sea island.
Unkempt pandanus trees, mounted on quaint high wooden
stilts, overhang the green water ; among the taller and
more graceful cocoa-palms, Norfolk Island pines, odd,
formal, and suggestive of hairbrushes, stand among feathery
ironwoods and spreading avavas about the palace of the
king. Quite close to the wharf this latter is placed a
handsome two-storeyed building, with wide verandahs
and a tower. Scarlet-coated sentries march up and down
all day at its gates ; it is surrounded by a wall, and care-
fully guarded from intruders. George Tubou II. is among
the shyest of monarchs and hates nothing so much as being
stared at ; so on steamer days there is little sign of life to
be seen about the palace.
I happened to arrive in Tonga at an interesting historical
crisis, and was promised an audience with the retiring
monarch.
After a week or two, however, the promise was suddenly
recalled, and the visitor informed that the king declined
to see her, then or at any other time. A little investigation
revealed the cause. The High Commissioner of the
Western Pacific had recently come over from Fiji, to
remonstrate with the Tongan monarchy concerning certain
unconstitutional behaviour, and a British man-of-war
had accompanied him. I, being the only other person
on the island from " Home," had naturally been seeing
9*
260 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
a good deal of the formidable stranger. This was enough
for the king. There was a plot to deprive him of his
throne, he was certain ; and it was obvious that I was in
it, whatever I might choose to say to the contrary. There
was no knowing what crime I might not be capable of, once
admitted to the Royal Palace. George Tubou II. is six
feet four, and twenty-seven stone weight, but he is dis-
tinctly of a nervous temperament ; and his fears of Guy
Fawkes-ism kept possession of his mind during the whole
of my stay ; so that the carefully averted face of a fat,
copper-coloured sort of Joe Sedley, driving very fast in a
buggy, was all I saw of Tonga's king.
There is no one, surely, in the world who quite comes
up to George of Tonga for a " guid conceit o' hansel'."
When he wished to provide himself with a queen, some
six or seven years ago, he first applied to the Emperor of
Germany, to know if there was a German Princess of
marriageable age whom he could have ! The Kaiser
politely replied in the negative. King George then sent
proposals to a princess of Hawaii who was as well educated
as any white lady, and used to diplomatic society in
Washington. This also failing, he turned his attentions
to his own country ; and then began the most extraordinary
love-story ever told under the Southern Cross a story
that could have happened nowhere on the globe, except in
the comic-opera country of Tonga.
There were two eligible princesses of the royal line of
Tonga Princess Ofa and Princess Lavinia. The king
appears to have proposed to them both, and then found
himself unable to decide between the two. They were
both of high rank, both good-looking after the portly
Tongan fashion, and both very willing to be queen, reign
over the fine palace, order lots of silk dresses from Auckland,
wear the queen's crown of Tonga (supposed to be gold,
but rather inclined to suspicious outbreaks of verdigris),
and see the natives get off their horses and kneel on the
ground, when the royal state carriage drove by.
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 261
But the king kept both princesses in the agonies of
suspense ever present, and hope constantly deferred for
months until the wedding-day was fixed, the wedding-
cake (ordered three years before from a New Zealand
confectioner, for the German Princess who was not to be
had) patched up and fresh coloured, the wedding-dress
provided, at the expense of the Government of Tonga
(according to custom) and actually made ! Not till the
very night before the wedding did his dilatory Majesty
at last declare his intentions, and fix upon the princess
he had last proposed to, whom nobody expected him to
take Lavinia. It is a sober fact that the wedding in-
vitation cards, sent out at the last minute, were printed
with a blank for the bride's name, which was added with
a pen !
Lavinia, overjoyed at her good luck, got into the
Governmentally provided wedding dress next day, and
(as the fairy tales say) " the wedding was celebrated with
great pomp ! " There is no sense of humour in Tonga. If
there had been, the king could hardly have selected the
means of consolation for Ofa's disappointment that he
actually did choose, in sending her the bottom half of his
wedding cake, as soon as the ceremony was over. Princess
Ofa was not proud ; she had been beating her head on
the floor-mats all morning and pulling out handfuls of
her long black hair, but when the consolatory cake arrived,
she accepted it promptly and ate it.
There are generally illuminations on the night of a royal
wedding. Tonga was not behind-hand in this matter,
but the illuminations were of rather an unusual kind,
being nothing less than numbers of burning native houses,
set on fire by the indignant friends of the jilted Princess
Ofa. The friends of the new queen retaliated in kind ;
and for nearly a week, arson became the recognised sport
of the island. This excess of party feeling soon died
down, however, and the newly married couple were left to
honeymoon in peace.
9t
262 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
An infant princess was born in due time, and not very
long after, Queen Lavinia died. Here was Princess Ofa's
chance, if Fate had permitted ; but Ofa herself was
dead, leaving no eligible princess to console the widowed
king.
For more than five years the monarch (who is still only
thirty-four) has lived alone, a mark for every husband-
hunting princess in the Pacific. A princess related to an
ancient island monarchy, invited herself to stay in the
palace one recent Christmas. King George received her
pleasantly, entertained her for some weeks, and then sent
her home with a big packet of fine tobacco and a barrel
of spirits, to console her for the non-success of her visit
which may be accounted for by the fact that she is rather
older than the king himself, and by no means so lovely
as she was. A favoured candidate is a certain princess
of the royal family of Tahiti. She has been described to
the king as handsome, and at least sixteen stone weight,
both of which claims are quite correct. King George really
wants a European princess, but as soon as he has been con-
vinced for the second time that this is impossible, it is
hoped that he will decide on the Tahitian princess, and
elevate her to the Tongan throne, since he admires fat
women exceedingly.
One of the most remarkable things in this remarkable
country is the Parliament. It would take too long to
record the history of this assembly's birth and develop-
ment ; but the chapter has been a notable one in Tongan
history. The Parliament usually consists of the King
and Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the
Chief Justice, and a score or two of important chiefs,
some of whom inherit by birth, while others are returned
by their native villages. At the time of my visit, there
were a couple of vacancies in this remarkable assembly, since
the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific (Governor
of Fiji) had just deported the Prime Minister and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer to Fiji, on account of certain
IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS 263
proceedings which resulted in emptying Tonga's public
treasury and leaving nothing to show for it.
Their absence did not greatly matter, however, as it is
a rule of the Tongan Constitution, that Parliament shall
not meet oftener than once in three years. An excellent
and practical reason lies at the root of this seemingly
peculiar law. Tongatabu is a small island, only twenty
miles long ; and when the Members of Parliament, dressed
in new cotton kilts, with smart large floor-mats tied round
their waists with sinnet (cocoanut fibre plait), and violet,
sea-green, or lemon silk shirts on their brown backs arrive
from the outer villages and islands in Nukualofa with all
their relatives, for the beginning of the session, something
very like a famine sets in. The whole Parliament, also
its sisters, aunts, and grandpapas, has to be fed at public
expense, while it stays in the capital arranging the affairs
of the nation ; and as the length of its sitting is always
regulated by the amount of provisions available, and never
ends until the last yam, the last skinny chicken, the last
sack of pineapples, is eaten up, it is easy to understand why
the capital does not care to undergo such a strain any oftener
than it can help.
A new Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer
were appointed before long, and it was made a condition of
the latter office, that the Chancellor should understand
a reasonable amount of arithmetic. There was also a
rigid rule made about the keeping of the key of the Govern-
ment safe in some suitable place. A good deal of trouble
was caused by the last Chancellor's losing it, one day
when he was out fishing on the coral reef ! There was a
duplicate, but the Chancellor had carefully locked it
up in the safe, to make sure it should not be lost ! The
poor old gentleman nearly get sunstroke hunting about
the coral reef for the key until he found it. If it had been
carried away by the tides, the safe must have remained
closed until an expert from Auckland could be brought up
to open it. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not
264 IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS
know how much he had in it, or how much he had spent in
the last quarter, it can readily be understood that the
public accounts acquired an entirely superfluous extra
tangle or two during the absence of the lost key.
Tonga enjoys one of the finest climates in the Pacific.
The heat is never excessive, and the air is generally bright
and invigorating. Fevers are unheard of, and the few
white residents of the islands enjoy splendid health.
As for the Tongans themselves, they dispute with the
Fijians the palm of being physically the finest and strongest
people in the whole Pacific ; and no one has ever thought
of challenging their claim to be the most intellectual of
all the brown island races. Their carriage is superb,
though only its extreme aplomb and ease save it from
degenerating into an actual swagger. Their dress displays
the most perfect taste in the South Seas. It consists,
among the men, of a short tunic (" vala ") of fine cashmere
or silk, occasionally of cotton, on working days draped
with all the grace of an antique statue, and worn with a
wide sash, and a thin, close-fitting singlet or shirt. The
Tongan woman generally wears a garment that is suggestive
of the Greek chiton a loose sleeveless dress reaching to a
point midway between waist and knee. Underneath is
seen a tunic similar to that of the men, but a little longer.
The colours chosen by both sexes are exquisite. No artist
could design more beautiful combinations than thos 
