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In the South Seas

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson >> In the South Seas




August 27.--I made a more extended circuit in the vale with Brother
Michel. We were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to these
rude paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which I
found myself no less agreeable than the scenes through which I
passed. We mounted at first by a steep grade along the summit of
one of those twisted spurs that, from a distance, mark out
provinces of sun and shade upon the mountain-side. The ground fell
away on either hand with an extreme declivity. From either hand,
out of profound ravines, mounted the song of falling water and the
smoke of household fires. Here and there the hills of foliage
would divide, and our eye would plunge down upon one of these deep-
nested habitations. And still, high in front, arose the
precipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemed
that scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags of
a human road where it seemed that not a goat could scramble. And
in truth, for all the labour that it cost, the road is regarded
even by the Marquesans as impassable; they will not risk a horse on
that ascent; and those who lie to the westward come and go in their
canoes. I never knew a hill to lose so little on a near approach:
a consequence, I must suppose, of its surprising steepness. When
we turned about, I was amazed to behold so deep a view behind, and
so high a shoulder of blue sea, crowned by the whale-like island of
Motane. And yet the wall of mountain had not visibly dwindled, and
I could even have fancied, as I raised my eyes to measure it, that
it loomed higher than before.

We struck now into covert paths, crossed and heard more near at
hand the bickering of the streams, and tasted the coolness of those
recesses where the houses stood. The birds sang about us as we
descended. All along our path my guide was being hailed by voices:
'Mikael--Kaoha, Mikael!' From the doorstep, from the cotton-patch,
or out of the deep grove of island-chestnuts, these friendly cries
arose, and were cheerily answered as we passed. In a sharp angle
of a glen, on a rushing brook and under fathoms of cool foliage, we
struck a house upon a well-built paepae, the fire brightly burning
under the popoi-shed against the evening meal; and here the cries
became a chorus, and the house folk, running out, obliged us to
dismount and breathe. It seemed a numerous family: we saw eight
at least; and one of these honoured me with a particular attention.
This was the mother, a woman naked to the waist, of an aged
countenance, but with hair still copious and black, and breasts
still erect and youthful. On our arrival I could see she remarked
me, but instead of offering any greeting, disappeared at once into
the bush. Thence she returned with two crimson flowers. 'Good-
bye!' was her salutation, uttered not without coquetry; and as she
said it she pressed the flowers into my hand--'Good-bye! I speak
Inglis.' It was from a whaler-man, who (she informed me) was 'a
plenty good chap,' that she had learned my language; and I could
not but think how handsome she must have been in these times of her
youth, and could not but guess that some memories of the dandy
whaler-man prompted her attentions to myself. Nor could I refrain
from wondering what had befallen her lover; in the rain and mire of
what sea-ports he had tramped since then; in what close and garish
drinking-dens had found his pleasure; and in the ward of what
infirmary dreamed his last of the Marquesas. But she, the more
fortunate, lived on in her green island. The talk, in this lost
house upon the mountains, ran chiefly upon Mapiao and his visits to
the Casco: the news of which had probably gone abroad by then to
all the island, so that there was no paepae in Hiva-oa where they
did not make the subject of excited comment.

Not much beyond we came upon a high place in the foot of the
ravine. Two roads divided it, and met in the midst. Save for this
intersection the amphitheatre was strangely perfect, and had a
certain ruder air of things Roman. Depths of foliage and the bulk
of the mountain kept it in a grateful shadow. On the benches
several young folk sat clustered or apart. One of these, a girl
perhaps fourteen years of age, buxom and comely, caught the eye of
Brother Michel. Why was she not at school?--she was done with
school now. What was she doing here?--she lived here now. Why
so?--no answer but a deepening blush. There was no severity in
Brother Michel's manner; the girl's own confusion told her story.
'Elle a honte,' was the missionary's comment, as we rode away.
Near by in the stream, a grown girl was bathing naked in a goyle
between two stepping-stones; and it amused me to see with what
alacrity and real alarm she bounded on her many-coloured under-
clothes. Even in these daughters of cannibals shame was eloquent.

It is in Hiva-oa, owing to the inveterate cannibalism of the
natives, that local beliefs have been most rudely trodden
underfoot. It was here that three religious chiefs were set under
a bridge, and the women of the valley made to defile over their
heads upon the road-way: the poor, dishonoured fellows sitting
there (all observers agree) with streaming tears. Not only was one
road driven across the high place, but two roads intersected in its
midst. There is no reason to suppose that the last was done of
purpose, and perhaps it was impossible entirely to avoid the
numerous sacred places of the islands. But these things are not
done without result. I have spoken already of the regard of
Marquesans for the dead, making (as it does) so strange a contrast
with their unconcern for death. Early on this day's ride, for
instance, we encountered a petty chief, who inquired (of course)
where we were going, and suggested by way of amendment. 'Why do
you not rather show him the cemetery?' I saw it; it was but newly
opened, the third within eight years. They are great builders here
in Hiva-oa; I saw in my ride paepaes that no European dry-stone
mason could have equalled, the black volcanic stones were laid so
justly, the corners were so precise, the levels so true; but the
retaining-wall of the new graveyard stood apart, and seemed to be a
work of love. The sentiment of honour for the dead is therefore
not extinct. And yet observe the consequence of violently
countering men's opinions. Of the four prisoners in Atuona gaol,
three were of course thieves; the fourth was there for sacrilege.
He had levelled up a piece of the graveyard--to give a feast upon,
as he informed the court--and declared he had no thought of doing
wrong. Why should he? He had been forced at the point of the
bayonet to destroy the sacred places of his own piety; when he had
recoiled from the task, he had been jeered at for a superstitious
fool. And now it is supposed he will respect our European
superstitions as by second nature.



CHAPTER XV--THE TWO CHIEFS OF ATUONA



It had chanced (as the Casco beat through the Bordelais Straits for
Taahauku) she approached on one board very near the land in the
opposite isle of Tauata, where houses were to be seen in a grove of
tall coco-palms. Brother Michel pointed out the spot. 'I am at
home now,' said he. 'I believe I have a large share in these
cocoa-nuts; and in that house madame my mother lives with her two
husbands!' 'With two husbands?' somebody inquired. 'C'est ma
honte,' replied the brother drily.

A word in passing on the two husbands. I conceive the brother to
have expressed himself loosely. It seems common enough to find a
native lady with two consorts; but these are not two husbands. The
first is still the husband; the wife continues to be referred to by
his name; and the position of the coadjutor, or pikio, although
quite regular, appears undoubtedly subordinate. We had
opportunities to observe one household of the sort. The pikio was
recognised; appeared openly along with the husband when the lady
was thought to be insulted, and the pair made common cause like
brothers. At home the inequality was more apparent. The husband
sat to receive and entertain visitors; the pikio was running the
while to fetch cocoa-nuts like a hired servant, and I remarked he
was sent on these errands in preference even to the son. Plainly
we have here no second husband; plainly we have the tolerated
lover. Only, in the Marquesas, instead of carrying his lady's fan
and mantle, he must turn his hand to do the husband's housework.

The sight of Brother Michel's family estate led the conversation
for some while upon the method and consequence of artificial
kinship. Our curiosity became extremely whetted; the brother
offered to have the whole of us adopted, and some two days later we
became accordingly the children of Paaaeua, appointed chief of
Atuona. I was unable to be present at the ceremony, which was
primitively simple. The two Mrs. Stevensons and Mr. Osbourne,
along with Paaaeua, his wife, and an adopted child of theirs, son
of a shipwrecked Austrian, sat down to an excellent island meal, of
which the principal and the only necessary dish was pig. A
concourse watched them through the apertures of the house; but
none, not even Brother Michel, might partake; for the meal was
sacramental, and either creative or declaratory of the new
relationship. In Tahiti things are not so strictly ordered; when
Ori and I 'made brothers,' both our families sat with us at table,
yet only he and I, who had eaten with intention were supposed to be
affected by the ceremony. For the adoption of an infant I believe
no formality to be required; the child is handed over by the
natural parents, and grows up to inherit the estates of the
adoptive. Presents are doubtless exchanged, as at all junctures of
island life, social or international; but I never heard of any
banquet--the child's presence at the daily board perhaps sufficing.
We may find the rationale in the ancient Arabian idea that a common
diet makes a common blood, with its derivative axiom that 'he is
the father who gives the child its morning draught.' In the
Marquesan practice, the sense would thus be evanescent; from the
Tahitian, a mere survival, it will have entirely fled. An
interesting parallel will probably occur to many of my readers.

What is the nature of the obligation assumed at such a festival?
It will vary with the characters of those engaged, and with the
circumstances of the case. Thus it would be absurd to take too
seriously our adoption at Atuona. On the part of Paaaeua it was an
affair of social ambition; when he agreed to receive us in his
family the man had not so much as seen us, and knew only that we
were inestimably rich and travelled in a floating palace. We, upon
our side, ate of his baked meats with no true animus affiliandi,
but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. The affair was
formal, and a matter of parade, as when in Europe sovereigns call
each other cousin. Yet, had we stayed at Atuona, Paaaeua would
have held himself bound to establish us upon his land, and to set
apart young men for our service, and trees for our support. I have
mentioned the Austrian. He sailed in one of two sister ships,
which left the Clyde in coal; both rounded the Horn, and both, at
several hundred miles of distance, though close on the same point
of time, took fire at sea on the Pacific. One was destroyed; the
derelict iron frame of the second, after long, aimless cruising,
was at length recovered, refitted, and hails to-day from San
Francisco. A boat's crew from one of these disasters reached,
after great hardships, the isle of Hiva-oa. Some of these men
vowed they would never again confront the chances of the sea; but
alone of them all the Austrian has been exactly true to his
engagement, remains where he landed, and designs to die where he
has lived. Now, with such a man, falling and taking root among
islanders, the processes described may be compared to a gardener's
graft. He passes bodily into the native stock; ceases wholly to be
alien; has entered the commune of the blood, shares the prosperity
and consideration of his new family, and is expected to impart with
the same generosity the fruits of his European skill and knowledge.
It is this implied engagement that so frequently offends the
ingrafted white. To snatch an immediate advantage--to get (let us
say) a station for his store--he will play upon the native custom
and become a son or a brother for the day, promising himself to
cast down the ladder by which he shall have ascended, and repudiate
the kinship so soon as it shall grow burdensome. And he finds
there are two parties to the bargain. Perhaps his Polynesian
relative is simple, and conceived the blood-bond literally; perhaps
he is shrewd, and himself entered the covenant with a view to gain.
And either way the store is ravaged, the house littered with lazy
natives; and the richer the man grows, the more numerous, the more
idle, and the more affectionate he finds his native relatives.
Most men thus circumstanced contrive to buy or brutally manage to
enforce their independence; but many vegetate without hope,
strangled by parasites.

We had no cause to blush with Brother Michel. Our new parents were
kind, gentle, well-mannered, and generous in gifts; the wife was a
most motherly woman, the husband a man who stood justly high with
his employers. Enough has been said to show why Moipu should be
deposed; and in Paaaeua the French had found a reputable
substitute. He went always scrupulously dressed, and looked the
picture of propriety, like a dark, handsome, stupid, and probably
religious young man hot from a European funeral. In character he
seemed the ideal of what is known as the good citizen. He wore
gravity like an ornament. None could more nicely represent the
desired character as an appointed chief, the outpost of
civilisation and reform. And yet, were the French to go and native
manners to revive, fancy beholds him crowned with old men's beards
and crowding with the first to a man-eating festival. But I must
not seem to be unjust to Paaaeua. His respectability went deeper
than the skin; his sense of the becoming sometimes nerved him for
unexpected rigours.

One evening Captain Otis and Mr. Osbourne were on shore in the
village. All was agog; dancing had begun; it was plain it was to
be a night of festival, and our adventurers were overjoyed at their
good fortune. A strong fall of rain drove them for shelter to the
house of Paaaeua, where they were made welcome, wiled into a
chamber, and shut in. Presently the rain took off, the fun was to
begin in earnest, and the young bloods of Atuona came round the
house and called to my fellow-travellers through the interstices of
the wall. Late into the night the calls were continued and
resumed, and sometimes mingled with taunts; late into the night the
prisoners, tantalised by the noises of the festival, renewed their
efforts to escape. But all was vain; right across the door lay
that god-fearing householder, Paaaeua, feigning sleep; and my
friends had to forego their junketing. In this incident, so
delightfully European, we thought we could detect three strands of
sentiment. In the first place, Paaaeua had a charge of souls:
these were young men, and he judged it right to withhold them from
the primrose path. Secondly, he was a public character, and it was
not fitting that his guests should countenance a festival of which
he disapproved. So might some strict clergyman at home address a
worldly visitor: 'Go to the theatre if you like, but, by your
leave, not from my house!' Thirdly, Paaaeua was a man jealous, and
with some cause (as shall be shown) for jealousy; and the feasters
were the satellites of his immediate rival, Moipu.

For the adoption had caused much excitement in the village; it made
the strangers popular. Paaaeua, in his difficult posture of
appointed chief, drew strength and dignity from their alliance, and
only Moipu and his followers were malcontent. For some reason
nobody (except myself) appears to dislike Moipu. Captain Hart, who
has been robbed and threatened by him; Father Orens, whom he has
fired at, and repeatedly driven to the woods; my own family, and
even the French officials--all seemed smitten with an irrepressible
affection for the man. His fall had been made soft; his son, upon
his death, was to succeed Paaaeua in the chieftaincy; and he lived,
at the time of our visit, in the shoreward part of the village in a
good house, and with a strong following of young men, his late
braves and pot-hunters. In this society, the coming of the Casco,
the adoption, the return feast on board, and the presents exchanged
between the whites and their new parents, were doubtless eagerly
and bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few years ago the
honours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwonted business, in
this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and outlandish
potentate--some Prester John or old Assaracus--a few years back it
would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host,
and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various
celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by a
malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quite
unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door while
their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of bitterness
towards his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stage
of the centenary of eighty-nine; the visit of the Casco which Moipu
had missed by so few years was a more unusual occasion in Atuona
than a centenary in France; and the dethroned chief determined to
reassert himself in the public eye.

Mr. Osbourne had gone into Atuona photographing; the population of
the village had gathered together for the occasion on the place
before the church, and Paaaeua, highly delighted with this new
appearance of his family, played the master of ceremonies. The
church had been taken, with its jolly architect before the door;
the nuns with their pupils; sundry damsels in the ancient and
singularly unbecoming robes of tapa; and Father Orens in the midst
of a group of his parishioners. I know not what else was in hand,
when the photographer became aware of a sensation in the crowd,
and, looking around, beheld a very noble figure of a man appear
upon the margin of a thicket and stroll nonchalantly near. The
nonchalance was visibly affected; it was plain he came there to
arouse attention, and his success was instant. He was introduced;
he was civil, he was obliging, he was always ineffably superior and
certain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presently
suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully
consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and ill-
omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut
in a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre of
photography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as by
accident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his
finery, and reduced his rival to a secondary role on the theatre of
the disputed village. Paaaeua felt the blow; and, with a spirit
which we never dreamed he could possess, asserted his priority. It
was found impossible that day to get a photograph of Moipu alone;
for whenever he stood up before the camera his successor placed
himself unbidden by his side, and gently but firmly held to his
position. The portraits of the pair, Jacob and Esau, standing
shoulder to shoulder, one in his careful European dress, one in his
barbaric trappings, figure the past and present of their island. A
graveyard with its humble crosses would be the aptest symbol of the
future.

We are all impressed with the belief that Moipu had planned his
campaign from the beginning to the end. It is certain that he lost
no time in pushing his advantage. Mr. Osbourne was inveigled to
his house; various gifts were fished out of an old sea-chest;
Father Orens was called into service as interpreter, and Moipu
formally proposed to 'make brothers' with Mata-Galahi--Glass-Eyes,-
-the not very euphonious name under which Mr. Osbourne passed in
the Marquesas. The feast of brotherhood took place on board the
Casco. Paaaeua had arrived with his family, like a plain man; and
his presents, which had been numerous, had followed one another, at
intervals through several days. Moipu, as if to mark at every
point the opposition, came with a certain feudal pomp, attended by
retainers bearing gifts of all descriptions, from plumes of old
men's beard to little, pious, Catholic engravings.

I had met the man before this in the village, and detested him on
sight; there was something indescribably raffish in his looks and
ways that raised my gorge; and when man-eating was referred to, and
he laughed a low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, like
one reminded of some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingled
with nausea. This is no very human attitude, nor one at all
becoming in a traveller. And, seen more privately, the man
improved. Something negroid in character and face was still
displeasing; but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled,
his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his eyes superb.
In his appreciation of jams and pickles, in is delight in the
reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endless
repetition of Moipus and Mata-Galahis, he showed himself engagingly
a child. And yet I am not sure; and what seemed childishness may
have been rather courtly art. His manners struck me as beyond the
mark; they were refined and caressing to the point of grossness,
and when I think of the serene absent-mindedness with which he
first strolled in upon our party, and then recall him running on
hands and knees along the cabin sofas, pawing the velvet, dipping
into the beds, and bleating commendatory 'mitais' with exaggerated
emphasis, like some enormous over-mannered ape, I feel the more
sure that both must have been calculated. And I sometimes wonder
next, if Moipu were quite alone in this polite duplicity, and ask
myself whether the Casco were quite so much admired in the
Marquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose.

I will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee with
two incongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand,
of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. And
when he said good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing
her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in
the falsetto of Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a
sentimental impression which I try in vain to share.




PART II: THE PAUMOTUS




CHAPTER I--THE DANGEROUS ARCHIPELAGO--ATOLLS AT A DISTANCE



In the early morning of 4th September a whale-boat manned by
natives dragged us down the green lane of the anchorage and round
the spouting promontory. On the shore level it was a hot,
breathless, and yet crystal morning; but high overhead the hills of
Atuona were all cowled in cloud, and the ocean-river of the trades
streamed without pause. As we crawled from under the immediate
shelter of the land, we reached at last the limit of their
influence. The wind fell upon our sails in puffs, which
strengthened and grew more continuous; presently the Casco heeled
down to her day's work; the whale-boat, quite outstripped, clung
for a noisy moment to her quarter; the stipulated bread, rum, and
tobacco were passed in; a moment more and the boat was in our wake,
and our late pilots were cheering our departure.

This was the more inspiriting as we were bound for scenes so
different, and though on a brief voyage, yet for a new province of
creation. That wide field of ocean, called loosely the South Seas,
extends from tropic to tropic, and from perhaps 123 degrees W. to
150 degrees E., a parallelogram of one hundred degrees by forty-
seven, where degrees are the most spacious. Much of it lies
vacant, much is closely sown with isles, and the isles are of two
sorts. No distinction is so continually dwelt upon in South Sea
talk as that between the 'low' and the 'high' island, and there is
none more broadly marked in nature. The Himalayas are not more
different from the Sahara. On the one hand, and chiefly in groups
of from eight to a dozen, volcanic islands rise above the sea; few
reach an altitude of less than 4000 feet; one exceeds 13,000; their
tops are often obscured in cloud, they are all clothed with various
forests, all abound in food, and are all remarkable for picturesque
and solemn scenery. On the other hand, we have the atoll; a thing
of problematic origin and history, the reputed creature of an
insect apparently unidentified; rudely annular in shape; enclosing
a lagoon; rarely extending beyond a quarter of a mile at its chief
width; often rising at its highest point to less than the stature
of a man--man himself, the rat and the land crab, its chief
inhabitants; not more variously supplied with plants; and offering
to the eye, even when perfect, only a ring of glittering beach and
verdant foliage, enclosing and enclosed by the blue sea.

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