they are dressing. They have brought, tied in pareus, their Sunday clothes. Women are changing gowns, and men struggle with shirts and trousers, awkward inflictions upon their ordinarily free bodies.
All the night people who have journeyed from Papara, from Papenoo, or nearer districts slumber upon the sidewalks. This sleeping about anywhere is characteristic of the Tahitian. On the quays, in the doorways of the large and small stores, in carriages, and on the decks of the vessels, men and women and children lie or crouch, sleeping peacefully, with their possessions near them.
In the fare tamaaraa, the coffee-houses of the Tinitos, the Chinese, the venders of provender and the marketers alike are slipping their taofe tau, their four-sous’ worth of coffee, with a tiny pewter mug of canned milk, sugar, and a half-loaf of French bread with butter.
My vis-a-vis at Shin Bung Lung’s is Prince Hinoe, the heir to the broken throne, a very large, smiling brown gentleman, who sits with the French secretary of the governor, the two, alack! patting the shoulders, pinching the cheeks, and fondling the long, ebon plaits of the bevy of beauties who are up thus early to flirt and make merry. Tahiti is the most joyous land upon the globe. Who takes life seriously here is a fool or a liver-ridden penitent. The shop is full of peals of laughter and stolen kisses. Those sons of Belial who taught the daughter of the governor of the Dangerous Isles her unspeakable vocabulary are here. They have been to the Paris, the premier saloon of Papeete, for their morning’s morning, an absinthe, or a hair of the dog that bit them yester eve.
What jokes they have! Stories of what happened last night in the tap-room of the cinematograph, how David opened a dozen bottles of Roederer, and there was no ice, so all alike, barefooted and silk-stockinged, drank the wine of Champagne warm, and out of beer glasses; of Captain Minne’s statement that he would kill a scion of Tahitian royalty (not Hinoe) if he did not marry his daughter before the captain returned from the Paumotus; and of Count Polonsky’s calling down the black procureur, the attorney-general, right in the same tap-room, and telling him he was a “nigger,” although they had been friends before.
Tahitian and French and English, but very little of the latter, echoes through the coffee-room. Even I make a feeble struggle to speak the native tongue, and arouse storms of giggles.
The market-place faces the Mairie, the city hall, and its center is a fountain beloved of youth. There sit or loll the maidens of Papeete at night, and titter as pass the sighing lads. There wait the automobiles to carry the pleasure bent to Kelly’s grove at Fa’a, where the maxixe and the tango rage, the hula-dancers quiver and quaver, and wassail has no bounds.
When the whites are at dinner, the natives meet in the market-place, which is the agora, as the place du gouvernment is the forum of the dance and music of these ocean Greeks.
But at this hour it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their mats on the pave, their goods spread before the eyes of the purchasers.
The sellers of the materials for hats are many. The bamboo fiber, yellowish white, is the choicest, but there are other colors and stuffs. The women venders smoke cigarettes and are always laughing. Old crones, withered and feeble, shake their thin sides at their own and others’ jokes.
Already the buyers are coming fast, householders and cooks and bachelors and beaux, tourists and native beauties.
A score of groups are smoking and chatting, flirting and running over their lists. Carriages and carts are tied everywhere, country folk who have come to sell or to buy, or both, and automobiles, too, are ranged beside the Mairie.
Matrons and daughters, many nationals, are assembling. The wife of a new consul, a charming blonde, just from New Jersey, has her basket on her arm. She is a bride, and must make the consul’s two thousand dollars a year go far. A priest in a black gown and a young Mormon elder from Utah regard each other coldly. A hundred Chinese cafe-keepers, stewards, and merchants are endeavoring to pierce the exteriors of the foods and estimate their true value. The market is not open yet. It awaits the sound of the gong, rung by the police about half past five. Four or five of these officials are about, all natives in gaudy uniforms, their bicycles at the curb, smoking, and exchanging greetings with friends.
The question of deepest interest to the marketers is the fish. The tables for these are railed off, and, peering through the barriers, the onlookers comment upon the kinds and guess at the prices.
The market-house is a shed over concrete floors, clean, sanitary, and occupied but an hour or two a day. There are three main divisions of the market, meat, fish, and green things. Meat in Tahiti is better uneaten and unsung. It comes on the hoof from New Zealand. Now, if you are an epicure, you may rent a cold-storage chamber in the glacerie, and keep your steaks and roasts until tender.
Fish is the chief item to the Tahitian. Give him only fish, and he may murmur at his fate; but deny him fish, and he will hie him to the reef and snare it for himself. All night the torches of the fishermen gleam on the foaming reef, and often I paddle out near the breakers and hear the chants and cries of the men as they thrust their harpoons or draw their nets. So it is the women who sell the fish, while the weary husbands and fathers lie wrapped in dreams of a miraculous draught.
There are three great aquariums in the world, at Honolulu, Naples, and New York. There is no other such fish-market as this of Papeete, for Hawaii’s has become Asiaticized, and the kanaka is almost nil in the angling art there. But those same fish that I gazed at in amazement in the tanks of the museums are spread out here on tables for my buying.
Impossible fish they are, pale blue; brilliant yellow; black as charcoal; sloe, with orange stripes; scarlet, spotted, and barred in rainbow tints. The parrot-fish are especially splendid in spangling radiancy, their tails and a spine in their mouths giving them their name.
The impression made upon one’s first visit to the Papeete market is overwhelming, the plenitude of nature rejoicing one’s heart, and the care of the Great Consciousness for beauty and color, and even for the ludicrous, the merely funny, causing curious groping sensations of wonder at the varied plan of creation.
Sexual selection and suitability to survive are responsible. Those vivid colors, those symmetrical markings, and laughable forms are all part of the going on of the world, the adaptation to environment, and the desire for love and admiration in the male and female.
These things from the deep seem hardly fish. They are bits of the sunset, fragments of a mosaic, Futuristic pictures; anything but our sodden, gray, or wateryhued fish of temperate climes. Some are as green as the hills of Erin, others as blue as the sky, as crimson as blood, as yellow as the flag of China. They are cut by nature in many patterns, round, or sectional, like a piece of pie, triangular, almost square; some with a back fin that floats out a foot or two behind.
They are grotesque, alarming, apparently the design of a joker. But tread not on the domain of the scientist, for he will prove to you that each separate queerness is only a trick of nature to fit its owner to the necessities of his habitat. The parrot-fish are screamingly fantastic. There are not even in the warm California or Florida waters the duplicates of these rainbow fish. The Garibaldi perch and the electric fish excite interest at Santa Catalina, but here are a hundred marvels, and if I wish I can see them all as they swim in and out of the coral caverns within the lagoon.
Porcupine fish are a delicacy, squid are esteemed, and even the devilfish is on the tables, hideous, repellent, slimy, horned, and tentacled; not mighty enough to crush out the life of the fisher, as was the horrific creature in Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea,” whom his hero fought, yet menacing even when dead. It is a frightful figure in its aspect of hatred and ugliness, but good to eat. See that fat Tahitian thrust his finger into the sides of the octopus to plumb its cooking qualities. It is quickly sold.
There are crabs and crawfish, eels and shrimps, prawns and varos, all hung up on strings. There are oysters and maoao, alive and dripping. The maoao is the turbo, a gastropod, a mysterious inhabitant of a twisted shell, who shuts the door to his home with a brightly-colored operculum, for all the world like half of a cuff-button. One eats him raw or cooked or dried. But he is not so odd as the varo one of the most delicious and expensive of Tahitian foods. These sea centipedes, as the English call them in Tahiti, are a species of ibacus, and are from six to twelve inches long, and two wide. They have legs or feelers all along their sides, like a pocket comb, a hideous head, and tail, and a generally repulsive appearance. If one did not know they were excellent eating, and most harmless in their habits, one would be tempted to run or take to a tree at sight of them. Their shell is a translucent yellow, with black markings. The female has a red stripe down her back, and red eggs beneath her. She is richer in flavor, and more deadly than the male to one who has a natural diathesis to poisoning by varos. Many whites cannot eat them. Some lose appetite at their looks, their likeness to a gigantic thousand-leg. Others find that the varo rests uneasy within them, as though each claw or tooth of the comb grasped a vital part of their anatomy. I think varos excellent when wrapped in hotu leaves, and grilled as a lobster. I take the beastie in my fingers and suck out the meat. Amateurs must keep their eyes shut during this operation.
Catching varos is tedious and requires skill. They live in the sand of the beach under two or three feet of water. One has to find their holes by wading and peering. They are small at the top, but roomy below. One cannot see these holes through ruffled water. Once located, grapnels, or spools fitted with a dozen hooks, are lowered into them. A pair inhabits the same den. If the male is at home, he seizes the grapnel, and is raised and captured, and the female follows. But if the female emerges first, it is a sure sign that the male is absent in search of food. I have pondered as to this habit of the varo, and have tried to persuade me that the male, being a courteous shrimp,–he is a kind of mantis-shrimp,–combats the intruding hooks first in order to protect his loved one; but the grapnel is baited with fish, and though masculine pride would insist that chivalry urges varo homme to defend his domestic shrine, fishers for the tidbit say that he is after the bait, and holds to it so tightly that he sacrifices his life. Nevertheless, the lady embraces the same opportunity to rise, and their deserted tenement is soon filled by the sands.
Trapping varos calls for patience and much dexterity. The mere finding of the holes is possible only to natives trained from childhood. Six varos make a good meal, with bread and wine, and they are most enjoyable hot–also most indigestible.
“Begin their eating by sucking a cold one,” once said a bon vivant to me. “Only when accustomed to them should you dare them hot and in numbers.”
Flying-fish are sold, many of them delicate in taste and shapely.
One may buy favorite sauces for fish, and some of the women offered them to me. One is taiaro, made of the hard meat of the cocoanut, with pounded shrimp, and allowed to ferment slightly. It is put up in bamboo tubes, three inches in diameter, and four or five feet long, tied at the opening with a pandanus-leaf for a seal. It is delicious on raw fish. I have seen a native take his fish by the tail and devour it as one would a banana; but the Tahitians cut up the fish, and, after soaking it in lime-juice, eat it with the taiaro. It is as tasty as Blue Points and tabasco.
There are two other epicurean sauces, one made of the omotu, the soft cocoanut, which is split, the meat dug out and put in the hue, the calabash, mixed with a little salt water, lime-juice, and the juice of the rea, the saffron, and allowed to ferment. This is the mitihue, a piquant and fetid, puante sauce that seasons all Tahitian meals. The calabash is left in the sun, and when the sauce dries up, water is poured on the dry ingredients, a perpetual saucebox.
In the arrangement of vegetables our own hucksters could learn. Every piece is scraped and cleansed. String beans are tied together in bundles like cigars or asparagus, and lettuce of several varieties, romaine and endive, parsnips, carrots, beets, turnips, and even potatoes, sweet and white, are shown in immaculate condition. The tomatoes do not rival ours, but Tahiti being seventeen degrees below the equator, one cannot expect such tropical regions to produce temperate-zone plants to perfection. That they are provided at all is due to the Chinese, those patient, acute Cantonese and Amoyans. The Tahitian has no competence in intensive cultivation or the will to toil. Were it not for the Chinese, white residents in many countries would have to forego vegetables. It is so in Mexico and Hawaii and the Philippines, although Japanese in the first two compete with them.
The main food of the Tahitians is feis, as is bread to us, or rice to the Asiatic. It is not so in the Marquesas, eight hundred miles north, where breadfruit is the staff, nor in Hawaii, where fermented taro (poi) is the chief reliance of the kanaka. The feis, gigantic bananas of coarse fiber, which must be cooked, are about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter, and grow in immense, heavy bunches in the mountains, so that obtaining them is great labor. They are wild creatures of heights, and love the spots most difficult of access. Only barefooted men can reach them. These feis are a separate species. The market-place is filled with them, and hardly a Tahitian but buys his quota for the day. The fei-gatherers are men of giant strength, naked save for the pareu about the loins, and often their feet from climbing and holding on to rocks and roots are curiously deformed, the toes spread an inch apart, and sometimes the big toe is opposed to the others, like a thumb. There are besides many kinds of bananas here for eating raw; some are as small as a man’s finger, and as sweet as honey.
The fei-hunters hang six or seven bunches on a bamboo pole and bring them thus to market. One meets these young Atlases moving along the roads, chaplets of frangipani upon their curling hair, or perhaps a single gardenia or tube-rose behind their ears, singing softly and treading steadily, smiling, and all with a burden that would stagger a white athlete.
The taro looks like a war-club, several feet long, three inches thick, and with a fierce knob. It and its tops are in demand. The breadfruit are as big as Dutch cheese, weighing four or five pounds, their green rinds tuberculated like a golf-ball. Sapadillos, tamarinds, limes, mangoes, oranges, acachous, and a dozen other native fruits are to be had. Cocoanuts and papayas are of course, favorites. There are many kinds of cocoanuts. I like best the young nut, which has the meat yet unformed or barely so, and can be eaten with a spoon, and holds about a quart of delicious wine. No matter how hot the day, this wine is always cool. One has only to pierce the top of the green rind, and tilt the hole above one’s mouth. If one has alcoholic leanings, the wine of a cocoanut, an ounce of rum, two lumps of sugar, a dash of grenadine, and the mixture were paradise enow.
The papayas, which the British call mammee-apple or even mummy-apple or papaw, because of the West Indian name, mamey, are much like pumpkins in appearance. They grow on trees, quite like palms, from ten to thirty feet high, the trunk scaly like an alligator’s hide, and the leaves pointed. The fruit hangs in a cluster at the crown of the tree, green and yellow, resembling badly shaped melons. The taste is musky sweet and not always agreeable to tyros. The seeds are black and full of pepsin. Boiled when green, the papaya reminds one of vegetable marrow; and cooked when ripe, it makes a pie stuffing not to be despised. I have often hung steaks or birds in the tree, protected by a cage from pests, or wrapped them in papaya-leaves to make them tender. The very atmosphere does this, and the pepsin extracted from the papaya by science is much used by druggists instead of animal extracts.
The market closed, the venders who have come in carts drive home, while those Tahitians who are not too old adorn themselves with flowers and seek pleasure. Young and old, they are laughing. Why? I need never ask the reason here, but look to the blue sky, the placid sea within the lagoon, the generous fruitage of nature, the palms and flowers ever present and inviting; the very sign of the gentle souls and merry hearts of these most lovable people. When I am alone with them I do not walk. I dance or skip.
Life is easy. The fei, the breadfruit, the cocoanut, the mango, and the taro are all about. No plow, no hoe, or rude labor, but for the lifting of one’s hand there is food. The fish leap in the brine, and the pig fattens for the oven. Clothes are irksome. A straw hut may be built in an hour or two, and in the grove sounds the soft music of love.
Aue! nom de poisson! within a day the market became a wailing-place. There were no fish. The tables daily covered with them were empty. The happy wives and consorts who had been wont to sell the catch of the men remained in their homes, and the fishers themselves were there or idle on the streets. The districts around the island, which for decades had despatched by the daily diligence, or by special vehicle or boat, the drafts of the village nets, sent not a fin. Never in Tahiti’s history except when war raged between clans, or between Tahitians and French, had there been such a fish famine.
And, name of a dog! it was due to a greve, a strike. It came upon the Papeete people like a tidal wave out of the sea, or like a cyclone that devastates a Paumotu atoll, but, entre nous, it had been brooding for months. Fish had been getting dearer and dearer for a long time, and householders had complained bitterly. They recalled the time when for a franc one could buy enough delicious fish for a family feast. They called the taata hara, the native anglers, cochons, hogs, and they discussed when they gathered in the clubs, or when ladies met at market, the weakness of the authorities in allowing the extortion. But nothing was done. The extortion continued, and the profanity increased. At the Cercle Bouganville Captain Goeltz and the other retired salts banged the tables and said to me:
“Sacre redingote! is it that the indigenes pay the governor or give him fish free? Are we French citizens to die of hunger that savages may ride in les Fords?”
They shouted for Doctor Funks, and drank damnation to the regime that let patriots surfer to profit les canaques. But, in reality, the governor months ago had secretly begun a plan to help them.
One day the governor, his good lady being gone to visit at Raiatea, had given his cook three francs to buy fish for the dejeuner at the palace. When they came on the table, a bare bite for each of the company, the governor had called in the chef.
“Mais, I gave you three francs for the fish, n’est-ce pas?”
“Mais, vous don’ lai moi t’ree franc, oui, oui,” answered the Chinese. “Moi don’lai canaque po po’sson.”
The governor had led in the chorus of sacres and diables. All at the table were of the redingote family, all feeding from the national trough at Paris, and they had the courage and power to end the damnable imposition on the slender purses of Papeete citizens. Sapristi! this robbery must cease. He must go slow, however. Being an honest and unselfish man, he investigated and initiated legislation so carefully and tardily that the remedy for the evil was applied only four days ago. He had returned to France, so one could not say that he consulted his own purse; but the present governor, an amiable man and a good bridge-player, also liked fish, and they pay no bonanza salaries, the French. The fishermen had known, of course, of the approaching end of their piracy, but, like Tahitians, waited until necessity for action. The official paper in which all laws are published had the ordinance set out in full. Translated, briefly, from the French, it ran like this:
That the Governor of the establishments of France in Oceania, a chevalier of the Legion of Honor [this information is inserted in every degree, announcement and statement the governor makes, and stares at one from a hundred trees], in view of the “article du decret du 21 decembre, 1885,” etc. [and in view of a dozen other articles of various dates since], considering that fish is the basis of the alimentation of the Tahitians, that in the Papeete public market, fish has been monopolized with the result that its price has been raised steadily, and a situation created injurious to the working people, the cost of living necessitating a constant increase in salaries, orders that after a date fixed, fish be sold by weight and at the following prices per kilo, according to the kind of fish:
30 cents a kilo 25 cents a kilo 20 cents a kilo 1st category 2d category 3d category
Aahi Auhopu Ature
Ahuru Au aavere Atoti
Anae Ioio Aoa-Ropa
Apai Mahimahi Faia
Ava Moi Fee
Lihi Nato Fai
Mu Nape Honu
Nanue Orare Inaa
Oeo Paere Maere
Paaihere Parai Maito
Paraha peue Puhi pape Marara Tehu Tohe veri Manini
Varo Taou Mao
Oura (chevrette) Uhi Mana Paapaa (crabs) Ume Ouma
Oura-miti (langouste) Vau Oiri Roi Pahoro
Tuhura Patia
Puhu miti
Pahua
Tapio
As a kilo is two and a fifth pounds, the ature that Joseph caught by the Quai de Commerce, being in the third category, would cost, under the ukase, less than ten cents a pound. Crabs being in the first category–paapaa,–would cost about thirteen cents a pound, and the succulent varo the same, whereas they were then two francs, or forty cents a pound. We lovers of sea centipedes toasted the brave governor vociferously.
The decrees were nailed to the trees on the Broom Road, in the rue de Rivoli, and in the market-place. The populace were joyous, though some old wholesale buyers like Lovaina questioned the wisdom of the governor’s edict and the effect on themselves.
“If they do that,” said she, “maybe, by’n’by they fix my meal or lime squash.”
Until the date of carrying out the mandate, one picked out a pleasing fish or string of fish, all nicely wrapped in leaves, and one asked, “A hia? How much?”
When Lovaina inquired the price, she smiled her sweetest, rubbed the saleslady’s back, and uttered some joke that made her sway with laughter, so that price became of no importance. But a sour-faced white or a pompous bureaucrat paid her saving, and Chinese, who kept the restaurants, invoked the curse of barrenness upon the venders.
The day came for the new scheme of fish-selling to go into effect. The mayor, a long-bearded and shrewd druggist, had bought up all the half-way accurate scales in the city, for there had not been a balance in the market. Everything was by strings, bunches, feels, and hefts. The fish counters, polished by the guardian of the marche, were now brilliant with the shiny apparatus.
The long-awaited morning found a crowd peeping through the railing half an hour earlier than usual. All would have a fill of delicacies. Lovaina with the Dummy drove down to the Annexe for me. Vava was making queer signs to her which either were unintelligible or which she thought absurd. She waved her long forefinger before him, which meant: “Don’t talk foolishness. I am not a fool.”
We reached the market-place when only a score or two had gathered.
A thousand devils! there was not a fish on the slabs. The merry wives were absent. The condition was plain.
The Dummy uttered a demoniacal grunt, and shook his head and hands before Lovaina in accusation. She answered him with a movement of her head up and down, which signified acquiescence.
“Dummy know,” she said mysteriously. “That Vava he find everything. He like old-time tahutahu, sorcerer. He tell me Annexe no fish. He say now no fish till finish those masheen.”
She laughed and rubbed my shoulders.
“The fish slip away,” she said, “and leave only their scales! Aue!”
M. Lontane, the second in command of the gendarmes, was sent scouting, and reported to the governor–not the one who originated the manifesto–that the famine was the result of an organized revolt against the law and order of the land. Fishermen he had questioned, replied simply, “Aita faito, paru! Aita hoo, paru!” Which, holy blue! meant, “No scales, fish! No price, fish!”
What to do? One cannot make a horse drink unless one gives him red peppers to eat. Even the Government could not make a fisherman fish for market, as there was a law against enforced labor except as punishment for crime or in emergencies, such as during the existence of martial law, the guarding against a conflagration, or a tidal wave or cyclone. At the Cercle Militaire many of the bureaucrats, and especially the doctor who had treated the cow-boy, were for martial law, anyway. Napoleon knew, said the fierce medecin. “A whiff of grapeshot, and the reef would be again gleaming with lights, and the diligences would pour in with loads of fish.”
Doctor Cassiou, a very old resident, and not at all fierce, asked his confrere against whom would the grapeshot be directed. Would he gather the fishermen from all over Tahiti, and decimate them, the way the Little Corporal purged mutiny out of his regiments? Lontane was sent out again. In the Cerele Bougainville he took a rum punch before starting on his bicycle, and he swore by his patron saint, Bacchus, that he would solve the problem even if denied the remedy of force majeure.
Within three hours of his return from Patutoa, a meeting was called of the council of state, the governor, the doctors, the druggist, a merchant or two, and a lawyer, and before it M. Lontane disclosed that the natives were possessed by a new devil that he feared was a recrudescence of the ancient struggle for independence.
Each fisherman he had examined refused to answer his interrogations, saying only, “I dobbebelly dobbebelly.”
The governor scratched his ear, and the mayor wiggled his hands behind, as he had on the wharf after the battle of the limes, coal, and potatoes. The lawyer said it must be an incantation, but that it was not Tahitian, for that language had no “d” in its alphabet. M. Lontane and all his squad were given peremptory orders to unriddle the enigma.
Meanwhile the fishless market continued. It was not entirely fishless, for before the bell rang we would see over the railings a few handfuls of varos, crayfish, and shrimps and perhaps a dozen small baskets of oysters. A policeman prevented a riot, but could not stay the rush when the bell rang and the gate was opened. The lovers of shellfish and the servants of the well-to-do snatched madly at the small supply, and paid whatever extravagant price was demanded. The scales were never touched, and any insistence upon the new legal plan and price was laughed at. With these delicacies beyond their means, the natives stormed the two pork butchers, the Tinitos. They grabbed the chops and lumps of pig, poking and kneading them, shouting for their weight, and in some instances making off without paying. There was such a howdy-do that extra policemen were summoned to form all into line.
There were no scaly fish, and it came out that the shellfish were caught by women, widows who had no men to obey or please, who had children, or who wanted francs to buy gewgaws or tobacco; and a few unsocial men fishers who did not abide by the common interests of their group.
At Lovaina’s we were on a tiresome round of canned salmon, eggs, and beef, and eggs rose to six sous each. In about a fortnight we began to have fish as usual, and Lovaina signed to me that the Dummy procured them in the country. I was very curious, and asked if I might accompany him. She said that he would call for me at the Annexe the next time he went.
I was awakened after midnight in my room–the doors were never locked–by the Dummy leaning over and shaking me. I opened my eyes, and he put his fingers to his lips. I dressed, and went with him in the old surrey. We drove through the night along the Broom Road. Once past the cemetery we were in the country. The cocoanut-trees were gray ghosts against the dark foliage and trunks of the breadfruits and the sugar cane; the reef was a faint gleam of white over the lagoon and a subdued sound of distant waters.
We jogged along, and as we approached Fa’a, I lit a match and looked at my watch. It was nearly two o’clock. The Dummy stopped the horse at Kelly’s dance-hall in a palm grove. The building was of bamboo and thatch, with a smooth floor of Oregon pine, and was a former himene house. Kelly had rented it from the church authorities. The dancing was over for the night, but a few carts were in the grove, and the lights were bright. We went inside, and found forty or fifty Tahitians, men and women, squatting or sitting on the floor, while on the platform was Kelly himself, with his accordion on the table. He saw me and shouted “Ia ora na!” And after a few minutes, while others came, began to speak. What he said was interpreted by a Frenchman, who, to my astonishment, proved to be the editor of one of those anti-government papers printed in San Francisco, that Ivan Stroganoff had shown me.
Kelly addressed the audience, “Fishermen and fellow stiffs.” He said that the fish strike was a success, and if they all remained true to one another, they would win, and the scales would be kicked out. The few scabs who sold fish in the market only made sore those unable to buy. He said that he had found out that the law applied only to the market-place, and that a plan would be tried of hawking fish from house to house in Papeete. They would circumvent the governor’s proclamation in that way. He praised their fortitude in the struggle, and after the editor had interpreted stiffs by te tamaiti aroha e, which means poor children, and scabs by iore, which means rats, and had ended with a peroration that brought many cries of “Maitai! Good!” Kelly took up his accordion, and began to play the sacred air of “Revive us Again!”
He led the singing of his version:
“Hallelujah! I’m a bum! Hallelujah! Bum again! Hallelujah! Give us a hand-out! To save us from sin!”
The Tahitians rocked to and fro, threw back their heads, and, their eyes shut as in their religious himenes, chorused joyfully:
“Hahrayrooyah! I’m a boom! Hahrayrooyah! Boomagay! Hahrayrooyah! Hizzandow! To tave ut fruh tin!”
They sang the refrain a dozen times, and then Kelly dismissed the meeting with a request for “three cheers for the I. W. W.”
There is no “w” in French or in Tahitian, and the interpreter said, “Ruperupe ah-ee dohblevay dohblevay!” And the Tahitians: “Ai dobbebelly dobbebelly!”
Kelly came down from the platform, his freckled face shining and his eyes serious but twinkling. He greeted me as the natives lit cigarettes and filed out.
“I’m runnin’ their strike for them,” he said. “It ‘s on the square. The poor fish! They don’t make hardly enough to pay for their nets, let alone an honest day’s pay, and they’re up half the night and takin’ chances with the sharks and the devil-fish. They have to pay market dues and all sorts of taxes. They ‘re good stiffs all right, and every one has a membership card in the I. W. W. applied for.”
When we went outside, I saw that the Dummy who had been a witness of the scene in the hall, had a large package of fish in the surrey, and all around there were other packages of them. The men had been selling to those who came to Fa’a for them, the law extending only to the market in Papeete.
The strikers hawked the fish in town the next day, but this was immediately forbidden. Hungry for fish–the Tahitians have one word meaning all that–though the people were, few could drive out to Fa’a to fetch them. Within Papeete fish were mysteriously nailed to the trees at night, and over each was a card with the letters, “I. W. W.”
Again a meeting of the council of state was called, and at it M. Lontane revealed the meaning of those cabalistic letters and the leadership of Kelly. He had tracked down the fishermen and found their headquarters at the dance hall.
At the Cercle Bougainville there was an uproar. Merchants drank twice their stint of liquor in their indignation. Syndicalism was invading their shores, and their already limited labor supply would be corrupted.
I could not picture too seriously the wrath of the honest traders at the traitorous conduct of Kelly, “a white man,” as told by M. Lontane. I was upbraided because of Kelly being an American with an Irish name. Lying Bill said it was “A bloody Guy Fawkes plot.”
M. Lontane took full credit for the discovery of what he termed “A complot that would rival the Dreyfus case.”
He struck his chest, and asked me sternly if I knew of M. LeCoq, the great detective, of Emile Gaboriau.
Kelly was arrested in the midst of his dancing soiree at Fa’a. He was put in the calaboose, and when he frankly said that he had come to Tahiti to preach the gospel of I. W. W.-ism and that he believed the fishermen had all the right on their side, he was sentenced as “a foreigner without visible means of support, a vagrant, miscreant, vagabond, and dangerous alien,” to a month on the roads, and then to be deported to the United States, whence he had come.
The strike or walk-out was broken. With the cessation of the direction of Kelly and his heartening song, the fishermen gradually went back to their routine, and their women folk to the market. The scales were in operation, but the himene, “Hahrayrooyah! I’m a boom! Hahrayrooyah! Boomagay!” was sung from one end of Tahiti to another, and “Ai dobbebelly dobbebelly” was made at the Cercle Bougainville a password to some very old rum said to have belonged to the bishop who wrote the Tahitian dictionary.
Chapter XV
A drive to Papenoo–The chief of Papenoo–A dinner and poker on the beach–Incidents of the game–Breakfast the next morning–The chief tells his story–The journey back–The leper child and her doll–The Alliance Francaise–Bemis and his daughter–The band concert and the fire–The prize-fight–My bowl of velvet.
We had another picnic; this time at Papenoo. Polonsky owned thirty thousand acres of land in the Great Valley of Papenoo, the largest of all the valleys of Tahiti. He had bought it from the Catholic mission, which, following the monastic orders of the church in other countries for a thousand years, had early adopted a policy of acquiring land. But there were too few laborers in Tahiti now. Christianity had not worked the miracle of preserving them from civilization. The priests were glad to sell their extensive holdings at Papenoo, and the energetic Russo-French count said that he would bring Slav families from Europe to populate and develop it. He would plant the vast acreage in cocoanut-trees, vanilla vines, and sugar-cane, and build up a white community in the South Seas. He had noble plans for a novel experiment.
We started from the Cercle Bougainville in the afternoon in carriages pulled by California bronchos. The dour Llewellyn, the handsome Landers, the boastful McHenry, Lying Bill, David, the young American vanilla-shipper, Bemis, an American cocoanut-buyer, the half-castes of the orchestra, and servants, filled three roomy carryalls. The ideal mode of travel in Tahiti in the cool of the day would be a donkey, a slow, patient beast, who might himself take an interest in the scenery, or at least the shrubbery. But the white must ever go at top speed, and we dashed through the streets of Papeete, the accordions playing “Revive us again!” the “Himene Tatou Arearea,” and other tunes, and we singing, “Hallelujah! I’m a bum!” and “Faararirari ta oe Tamarii Tahiti! La, li!” One never makes merry privately in the South Seas.
Through Papeete we went along the eastern Broom Road, our train attracting much attention. We stopped at the glacerie for ice, and Polonsky insisted that we make a detour to his residence to drink a stirrup-cup of champagne. He donned riding-breeches and took a horse from his well-appointed stable.
Against the road on each side were close hedges of acalypha, or false coffee, called in Tahitian tafeie, a small tree which grows quickly, and the leaves of which are red or bronze or green, handsome and admirably suited for fencing. Through these hedges and the broad entrances I saw the houses and gardens, the residents and family life of the people. Everywhere was a small prosperity, with gladness; pigs and sheep cropping the grass and herbs, which were a mat of green, rising so fast with the daily showers that only flocks could keep it shorn. On the verandas and on the turf idle men and women were gazing at the sky, talking, humming the newest air, plaiting hats, or napping. No one was reading. There was no book-store in Tahiti. I had not read a line since I came. I had not stepped up to the genial dentist’s to see an American journal. After years of the newspaper habit, reading and writing them, it had fallen away in Tahiti as the prickly heat after a week at sea. Of what interest was it that the divorce record was growing longer in New York, that Hinky Dink had been reelected in Chicago, and that Los Angeles had doubled in population. A dawn on the beach, a swim in the lagoon, the end of the fish strike, were vastly more entertaining.
We passed the gorge of Fautaua, where Fragrance of the Jasmine and I had had a charmed day. The pinnacles of the Diadem were black against the eastern sky. Aorai, the tallest peak in sight, more than a mile high, hid its head in a mass of snowy clouds.
Not far away was the mausoleum of the last king of the Society Islands, Pomare the Fifth, with whose wide-awake widow, the queen, I had smoked a cigarette a day ago. It was a pyramid of coral, a red funeral-urn on top, and a red P on the facade. Pillars and roof were of the same color, and a chain surrounded it. The tomb was rococo, glaring, typical of the monuments in the South Seas where the aboriginal structures of beauty or interest were destroyed by the missionaries to please their Clapham Seminary god. Pomare, who had been the victim of French political chicane, enjoyed now but one privilege. If his spirit had senses, it heard the lapping of the waves upon the beach of the lagoon across which his ancestor, the first Pomare, had come from Moorea to be a king.
We left the Broom Road for Point Venus to see the monument to Captain James Cook, the great mariner of these seas. The only lighthouse on Tahiti is there. On that spot Cook and his astronomers had observed the transit of Venus in 1769, and it was there the first English missionaries landed from the ship Duff to convert the pagan Tahitians. Cook has a pillar, with a plate of commemoration, in a grove of purau-trees, cocoanuts, pandanus, and the red oleander; Cook who is an immortal, and was loved by a queen here.
We left behind Paintua, Taunoa, Arahim, Arue and Haapape, and came to a shore where no reef checked the waves in a yeasty line a mile or less from the beach. The breakers roared and beat upon a black shore, strangely different from the Tahitian strand that I had seen. For miles a hundred feet of sable rocks, pebbles, some small and others as big as a man’s hand, lay between the receded tide and the road, and all along huge islets of somber stone defended themselves as best they could against the attack of the surf. Signs of surrender showed in some, caverns and arches cut by the constant hammer of swell and billow.
Sugar-cane, vanilla, pineapples, coffee, bananas, plantation after plantation, with the country houses of Papeete’s merchants, officials, lawyers, and doctors, moved past our vehicle, and, as we increased the distance from the capital, the beautiful native homes appeared.
Simple they were, with no windows or doors, mere shelters, but cool and cheap, with no division of rooms, and no furniture but the sleeping mats and a utensil or two. Natives were seen cooking their simple meal of fish and breadfruit, or only the latter. The fire was in the ground or under a grill of iron on stones. They would not go hungry, for mango-trees lined the road, and bananas, feis, and pineapples were to be had for the taking.
We drove through Aapahi and Faaripoo and saw a funeral. In the grounds of the dead man sat two large groups of people, the men and the women separate. They talked of his dying and his property, and his children, while those who liked to do so made him ready for the grave. A hundred yards away, in a school-yard, twoscore men, women, boys, and girls played football. The males were in pareus, naked except about the waist, and they kicked the heavy leather sphere with their bare feet.
Pare, Arue, and Mahina districts behind us, we were in Papenoo, a straggling village of a few hundred people along the road, the houses, all but the half-dozen stores of the Chinese, set back a hundred yards, and the domestic animals and carts in the front.
With a flourish we drove into the inclosure of the largest, newest, and most pretentious house, and were greeted by Teriieroo, the Tahitian chief, all native, but speaking French easily and musically. Count Polonsky shook hands with him, as did we all, but when a daughter appeared, neither Polonsky nor we paid her any attention. Yet she was Polonsky’s “girl,” as they say here, and he kept her in good style in a house near her father’s, sending his yellow automobile for her when he wanted her at his villa near Papeete.
The chief’s house had four bedrooms, each with an European bed, three-quarter size, and with a mattress two feet high, stuffed with kapok, the silky cotton which grows on trees all over Tahiti, These mattresses were beveled, and one must lie in their middle not to slip off. The coverlets were red and blue in stamped patterns.
It was dark when we touched the earth after two hours’ driving, and leaving the coachman to care for the horses, we went with the chief, each of us carrying a siphon of seltzer or a bottle of champagne or claret. Our way was through an old and dark cocoanut grove, a bare trail, winding among the trees, and ending at the beach.
Polonsky had had built a pavilion for the revel. Fifty feet away was a kitchen in which the dinner was cooking, its odors adding appetite to that whetted by the several cocktails which Polonsky had mixed when the ice was brought in a wheelbarrow from the wagon.
We sat down in chairs on the turf a foot from the jetty boulders, and watched the inrush of the breakers. A light breeze outside had stirred the water, and the combers were white and high.
“Every sea is really three seas,” said McHenry, pipe in hand, as he sipped his Martini. “We fellows who have to risk our cargoes and lives in landing in the Paumotus and Marquesas, study the accursed surf to find out its rules. There are rules, too, and the ninth wave is the one we come in on. That is the last of the third group, the biggest, and the one that will bring your boat near enough to shore to let all hands leap out and run her up away from the undertow.”
Lights were placed in the new house. It was elegantly made, of small bamboos up and down, with a floor of matched boards, the roof of cocoanut-leaves, and hung with blossoms of many kinds. The table had been spread, and there was a glitter of silver and glass, with all the accoutrements of fashion. We sat down, eight, the chief making nine, and ate and drank until ten o’clock. The piece de resistance was the sucking pig, with taro and feis, but roasted in an oven, and not in native style; and there was a delicious young turkey from New Zealand, a ham from Virginia, truffles, a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, and a plum pudding from London. The claret was 1900 and 1904, a vintage obtained by Polonsky in Paris. The champagne, also, was of a year, and frapped. Tahitian coffee, with brown sugar from the chief’s plantation, ended the banquet.
There was no conversation of any interest. The Parisian count was far removed in experience and culture from the others, and probably only the necessity of companionship in revelry and cards brought them together. Europe, and all the earth, was his playground, and doubtless he had lavished a fortune in pleasure in the capitals of the Continent. Llewellyn had an education in the universities of England and Germany, but since young manhood had been in his birthplace, and the others were the rough and ready stuff of business or seafaring.
The table for the gambling was moved to the sward by the shingle, and lamps hung upon bamboos planted at each end. It was balmy, and we sat in our shirts, the bosoms open for the breeze, the count with his gorgeous Japanese god shining upon his ivory breast, and the round glass in his eye. The tattooed skeleton upon his forearm was uncanny in the flickering light, the black shadows of the eyes seeming to open and close as the rays fell upon it.
Landers, though he had drunk with all, was appreciative of every nicety of the game, and won fifteen hundred francs. He alone was cool, watching the faces of the players at every crisis, quick to detect a weakness, to interpret rightly a gesture or counting of losses and gains, remorselessly hammering home his victories, and always suave and generous in action.
Llewellyn would withdraw his attention to listen to the himene of the musicians thirty feet away, which consisted mostly of familiar American airs, interpolated with bizarre staves and dissonances. One caught a beloved strain, and then it wandered away queerly as if the musician had forgotten the score and had done his best otherwise. I never heard in Tahiti one air of Europe or America played through as composed, without variation or omission, except the national anthem of France.
“They are happy, those boys,” mused Llewellyn. “They get more out of life than we do. Why should we fool with these cards here when we might sing?”
Llewellyn was only a quarter Tahitian, but at times the island blood was the only pulse he felt. One noticed it especially during the himenes, when he seemed to wander far from the business in hand. That business being poker, and Landers all attention to the cards and the psychology of his antagonists, every time Llewellyn harked to the himene he lost a little, and when he became entangled in a jackpot of size, and drew too many cards on account of his abstraction, he was mulcted of fifty francs and failed of winning the two hundred he might have won.
“Unlucky at cards, lucky in something else,” said he, self-consolingly.
“Ye want to drop that other thing when ye’re playing cards,” McHenry advised as he scooped in the pot. “The cards are all queens to you.”
Chief Teriieroo a Teriieroterai sat ten feet removed from the players, but kept his eyes on the money. They played with notes, five francs being the smallest, and the others twenties and hundreds. The chief smiled whenever Count Polonsky drew in a heap of these, and when one fell on the floor, he scrambled under the table to prevent it being blown on the rocks. The Javanese served the drinks, and a crowd of natives watched curiously the shifting vantages from a respectful distance.
It was three o’clock when the scores were settled, and, the chief leading with a lantern, we tramped through the great cocoanut-grove to his residence.
Landers and I each took a bed, I being warned to be forehanded by my experience in Moorea, where I slept on the floor. The chief retired, and Polonsky went off with his arm about his inamorata’s waist, she having apparently awaited his return. When Llewellyn and McHenry appeared half an hour later, having emptied a bottle reminiscent to McHenry of his father’s liking for Auld Reekie, they were discomfited by the beds being all occupied, the other two having been early claimed by two men who ate and drank and immediately slept.
When I awoke, the sun was up half an hour, and Landers and I went for a bath in the brook. We found a pool famed in the legends of the natives. In the olden days the kings and chiefs would have made it tabu to themselves.
Landers had on a pareu only, his two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle a refreshing sight, and his eyes as bright as if he had had the prescribed eight hours. They looked at him, sighingly, the young women of the village, even at this hour busied cooking breadfruit or fish and coffee; and Landers flirted with each one and in Tahitian called out words which made them laugh, and sometimes hide their heads coquettishly.
“I dated them all,” he said to me when we were under the water. We threw off our garments at the edge of the pool and plunged in. The water was as soft as milk and as clear as crystal, cool and invigorating. I drank my fill of it as I swam.
Breakfast we had in the chief’s house, the remains of the amuraa rahi of the night before. The chief drank coffee with us, and when we had gone to sit on the veranda, his eight children and wife took the board. I talked with Teriieroo a Teriieroterai for half an hour in French. He was thirty-eight years old, very engaging, and had several grandchildren.
“Eh bien,” he said to my question, “I will tell you. I was married first at sixteen years of age and this is my third wife.” He pointed over his shoulder to a tow-headed German for all I could see, and who certainly showed no sign of the native except in her dress and manners and avoirdupois.
“My first wife died,” continued the arii, contemplatively. “I divorced the second, and the third is just now eating the first dejeuner in that room. I have eight children, and will have twenty, and I am the chief of the Papenoo district, but this is not the place of my ancienne famille. I was appointed here by the French Governor three years ago to administer the district, which needed a strong hand. I like it, and have bought land and built this house. I will stay my days here. There is the farehau, the administration building where I meet the people and we have conferences.”
He pointed to a wooden cottage near by, with what looked like a dancing-pavilion attached. There the people come to squat upon the floor and relate their grievances. Most of the disputes before minor and major courts were over land and water rights.
It was half past seven o’clock when we inspanned for the trek to Papeete, a balmy, brilliant morning. The banks and cliffs were masses of ferns, the living imposed upon the dead, and hibiscus and gardenias and clumps of bamboo in a dissolving pageant mingled with plots of taro and yams, pineapples and bananas. The majestic bread trees and the spreading mangoes, the latter with their fruit verging from gold to russet, were surflnounted by the soaring cocoanuts, the monarchs of the tropics, whose banners fly from every atoll, and fall only before the most terrible might of the King of Storms.
A cocoanut-palm bears at eight years and when about twenty-five feet high. It rises seventy or eighty feet, and has a hundred curves. It is the wily creature of the winds, but outwits them in all but their worst moods. To the tropical man the cocoa-palm is life and luxury. He drinks the milk and eats the meat, or sells it dried for making soaps and emollients and other things; the oil he lights his house with and rubs upon his body to assuage pain; he builds his houses and wharves of it, and thatches his home with the husks, which also serve for fuel, fiber for lines and dresses and hats, leaves for canoe-sails and the shell of the nut for his goblet. Its roots he fashions into household utensils. The cocoa grows where other edibles perish. It dips its bole in the salt tide, and will not thrive removed from its beloved sea.
To me there is an inexpressible sentiment in the presence of these cocoa-palms. They are the symbol of the simplicity and singleness of the eternal summer of the tropics; the staff and gonfalons of the dominion of the sun. My heart leaps at their sight when long away. They are the dearest result of seed and earth. I drink their wine and esteem dwelling in their sight a rare communion with the best of nature.
They joked Count Polonsky about his girl, and he began to explain.
“I was here a year before I found one that suited me,” he said as he rode beside the wagon. “I don’t love her, nor she me, but I pay her well, and ask only physical fidelity for my physical safety. Her father is practical and influential, and will help me with my plans for development of the Papenoo valley, which I have bought.”
Three tall and robust natives in pareus of red and yellow, and carrying long spears, went by, accompanied by a dozen dogs. We stopped them, and they said they were from the Papara district on their way to hunt pig in the Papenoo Mountains for Count Polonsky. The latter remembered he had ordered such a hunt, and explained through Llewellyn that he was their employer.
They faced him, and seldom was greater contrast. Magnificent semi-savages, clothed in only a rag, their powerful muscles responsive to every demand of their minds, and health glowing in their laughing countenances: Polonsky, slight, bent, baldish, arrayed in Paris fashions, a figure from the Bois de Boulogne, his glass screwed in his weak eye, the other myopic, teeth missing, and face pale. But at his command they hunted, for he had that which they craved, the money of civilization, to buy its toys and poisons. Polonsky had a reputation for generous dealing.
A bent native man repairing the road near Faaripoo had his face swathed in bandages. He greeted us with the courteous, “Ia ora na!” but did not lift his head.
“He is a leper,” said Llewellyn. “I have seen him for years on this road. He may not be here many more days, because they are segregating the lepers. The Government has built a lazaretto for them up that road.”
We saw a group of little houses a short distance removed from the road. They were fenced in and had an institutional look.
“There’s hundreds of lepers in Tahiti,” remarked McHenry.
“Mac, you’re a damned liar,” replied Llewellyn. He was an overlord in manner when with natives, but his quarter aboriginal blood caused the least aspersion on them by others to touch him on the raw.
“Well, there’s a bloody lot o’them,” broke in Lying Bill.
“Eighty only,” stated Llewellyn, conclusively. “The Government has taken a census, and they ‘re all to be brought here. Did you hear that Tissot left for Raiatea when he heard of the census? He’s a leper and a white man. They seized young Briand yesterday.”
I was astonished, because the latter had lived opposite the Tiare Hotel, and I had met him often at the barber’s. I had been “next” to him at Marechal’s shop a week before.
“He did not know he was a leper until they examined him,” Llewellyn went on. “He does not know how he contracted the disease. I don’t mind it. I am not afraid. You get used to it. I tell you, the only leper I ever knew that made me cry was a kid. I used to see on the porch of a house on the road to Papara from Papeete a big doll. A little leper girl owned it, and she was ashamed to be seen outside her home, so she put on the veranda the doll she loved best to greet her friends. She made out that the doll was really herself, and she loved to listen when those who might have been playmates talked to the doll and fondled it. She lived for and in the doll, and those who cherished the little girl saw that each Christmas the doll was exchanged secretly for a bigger one, keeping pace with the growth of the child. I have caressed it and sung to it, and guessed that the child was peeping and listening inside. She herself never touched it, for it would be like picking up one’s own self. Each Christmas she saw herself born again, for the old dolls were burned without her knowledge. And all the time her own little body was falling to pieces. Last Christmas she was carried to the door to see the new doll. I bought it for her, and I had in it a speaking-box, to say ‘Bonjour!’ I sent to Paris for it. She’s dead now, poor little devil, or they’d have shut her up in the lazaretto.”
Bemis bought cocoanuts for shipment for food purposes. His firm sold them all over America to fruitdealers for eating raw by children, and shredded and prepared them for confectioners and grocers. He was the only buyer in Tahiti of fresh nuts, as all others purchased them as copra, split and dried, for the oil. Bemis had been here years ago, he said.
“I’m married now,” he told me, “but in those days I was a damn fool about the Tahitian girls. I put in six months here before I was married.”
He became thoughtful, and asked me to accompany him to the soiree of the Alliance Francaise, in the Palais cinema-hall. The Alliance was for encouraging the study and use of the French language. A few decades ago Admiral Serre, the governor, had forbidden the teaching of French to girls in the country districts as hurtful to their moral weal. It was feared that they would seek to air their learning in Papeete, and, as said Admiral Serre, be corrupted. A new regime reckoned a knowledge of French a requisite of patriotism.
At the Palais the scene was brilliant. Two large banana-trees were apparently growing at the sides of the stage, and the pillars of the roof were wreathed in palm-leaves. Scores of French flags draped the walls. Pupils of the government schools occupied many seats, and their families, friends, and officials the others. The galleries were filled with native children. Marao, the former queen, and her daughters, the Princesses Boots and Tekau, with a party of English acquaintances, were in front, and the general audience consisted of French and every caste of Tahitian, from half to a sixteenth. The men were in white evening suits, and the women and girls in decollete gowns, white and colored.
It was eight o’clock when the governor entered on the arm of the president of the Alliance, Dr. Cassiou. He was in a white drill uniform, with deep cuffs of gold bullion, and a blazing row of orders on his breast. The republique outdoes many monarchies in decorating with these baubles its heroes of politics. The governor, a wholesome-looking diplomat, was the image of the famous host of the Old Poodle Dog restaurant in San Francisco, who himself would have had a hundred ribbons in a just democracy.
The band of native musicians played “The Marseillaise,” but nobody stood. With all their embellishments, the French would not incommode themselves at the whim of a baton-wielder, who in America had only to wave his stick in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and any one who did not humor his whim by getting on his feet was beaten by his neighbors, who would not suffer without him.
With the governor were the inspecteurs colonials, the bearded napkin-wearers of Lovaina’s. They, too, had a line of gay ribbon from nipple to nipple. These three and the boulevardier, the gay secretary, sat upon the stage beside a stack of gilded red books. The band played “La Croix d’Honneur,” and the good Dr. Cassiou read from a manuscript his annual address in a low voice becoming a ministrant at sick-beds. Another piece by the band, and the books were distributed to the pupils, who went tremulously upon the stage to receive them from the governor’s hand. This was a lengthy process, but each child had a claque, which communicated enthusiasm to the others of the audience, and there was continuous clapping.
“Les Cadets de Russie” by the band preceded the allocution by the governor. He also spoke sotto voce, as if to himself, and as no one heard his words, the fans of native straw and Chinese turkey feathers were plied incessantly. The heat was oppressive. A sigh of relief came with the entr’acte, when all the grown folk flocked to the attached saloon. I joined the queen’s group for a few moments, and drank champagne with her and her daughters, and I was called over to have a glass of Perrier Jouet with the governor’s party. Most of the natives drank bottled lemonade from the glacerie at five sous a bottle. The queen wore a rose in her hair. She was very large, with almost a man’s face, shrewd, heavy, determined, and yet lively, and without a shade of pretense. Her walk was singularly majestic, and was often commented upon.
The Princess Tekau was beautiful, quite like a Spanish senorita in color and feature, her ivory skin gleaming against a pale-blue bodice, and her blue-black hair piled high. We talked French or English, with many Tahitian words thrown in, according to the mood or need of the moment. Every one was laughing. After all, Tahiti was very simple, and even officialdom could not import aristocracy or stiffness into a climate where starch melted before one could impress a spectator.
The inspecteurs and others of the suite had smiles and quips for humbler girls than princesses. I saw one of the awesome whiskerandos from Paris, haughty and secretive toward the French, lighting the cigarette of a blanchisseuse at the Pool of Psyche, his arm about her, and his black bristles nearer than necessary to her ripe mouth. A merchant dining away from home slapped caressingly the hips of the girls who waited upon him, nor concealed his gestures. Hypocrisy had lost her shield in Tahiti, because, except among a few aged persons, and the pastors, she was not a virtue, as in America and England, but a hateful vice.
Back again in the Palais, cooled and made receptive to music by the joyous quarter of an hour in the buffet, we heard Mme. Gautier sing “Le Cid,” by Massenet, and the Princess Tekau accompany her effectively on the piano. A solo de piston, a violin, a flute, all played by Tahitians, entertained us, and then came the fun. M. X—- was down for a monologue. Who could it be? He bounced on the stage in a Prince-Albert coat and a Derby hat, rollicking, truculent, plainly exhilarated. Why, it was M. Lontane in disguise, the second in command of the police, the hero of the battle of the limes, the coal, and the potatoes. He gave a side-splitting burlesque of the conflict. He acted the drunken stoker, the man who would write to “The Times” when M. Lontane placed his pistol at his stomach, and he made us see the fruit and coal flying. It was all good natured, and his dialogue (monologue) amusing. We saw how we Anglo-Saxons appeared to the French, and learned how the hoarse growl of the British sailor sounded.
The governor was delighted, the inspecteurs also. The officials took their cue, the entire audience laughed, and the galleries of children, not understanding at all, but convulsed at the antics of the head policeman, yelled encore. The British consul grinned, and the governor turned and winked at him. The entente cordiale was cemented again. The second in command, who provoked the sundering of the tie, had reunited it by his comicality. Ire dissolved in glee.
A play followed, in which several of the players were in the audience, and in which my barber, M. Bontet, shone, and moving-pictures followed. The babies were long asleep, and we yawning when we were dismissed at half past twelve.
Bemis, the cocoanut-buyer, sat through the entr’acte, not accompanying me to the buffet. He received a shock during the handing out of the premiums and was silent afterward. Bemis was a striking man, because the very regular features of his young face were set off by a mass of white hair. He was placid, without a disturbing intellect, and interested solely in the price and condition of fresh cocoanuts for shipment. I had seen him start when a little girl of distinctive expression was called to the stage to receive her book. She sat with her mother and putative father, and their other children. When I first saw her, I pulled his arm.
“Bemis,” I said, “for heaven’s sake, look at that girl!”
He looked, and his face tensed, growing ashen white. “She’s the image of you, Bemis,” I pursued.
“For God’s sake, talk low!” he cautioned. “People are rubbering at me now. She is mine, I’m sure. I was here six months a dozen years ago and had an affair with her mother, who sits there. What can I do? I have my own at home in Oakland. I could not tell. I never knew about that girl until a week ago. She doesn’t know me. I saw her on the Broom Road, so I came to-night to have a good look at her. I was afraid to come alone. It would do no good for me to tell her. She’s taken care of. She’s lovely, isn’t she? I’d like to take her in my arms once.”
We walked to the Annexe.
“I’ll tell you,” he resumed. “I can’t blame myself. I was like any young fellow who comes down here,–I wasn’t more than twenty-five,–but I feel like hell. That child’s face is almost identical, except for color, with my baby of eight or nine at home. I’m afraid I’ll see it at night when I go back.”
On the trees, which carry all the public announcements, appeared a notice of a concert by the local band:
Fanfare de Papeete
Le public est informe la Fanfare donnera son Concert sur la Place du Gouvernement Mardi Soir a 8 heures.
RETRAITE
aux Flambeaux!
All day it rained, but at seven a myriad of stars were in the sky. The Place du Gouvernement is a large lawn between the group of buildings devoted to administrative affairs, with seats for several score, but not for the hundreds who attended the band concert. The notice about the flambeaux drew even the few boys and youths who might not have come for the music.
In the center of the lawn was a kiosk, and on the four sides the rue de Rivoli, the garden of the Cercle Militaire, the grounds of the former palace of the Pomares, now the executive offices, and the pavilion of the Revues.
I went early when the lights were being turned on. Only the sellers of wreaths had arrived, and they seated themselves along the square, their ferns and flowers on the ground beside them. Then came the venders of sweets, ice-cream, and peanuts, and soon the band and the throng.
An allegro broke upon the air, and stilled for a moment the chatter. Most of the people stood or strolled in twos or dozens. They bought wreaths and placed them on their bare heads, while the few who wore hats encircled them with the brilliant greens and blossoms. Bevies of handsome girls and women in their prettiest tunics, many wearing Chinese silk shawls of blue or pink, their hair tied with bright ribbons, sat on the benches or grouped about the confectionery-stands. Many carriages and automobiles were parked in the shadows, holding the more reserved citizens–the governor, the royal family, the bishop, the clergy, and dignified matrons of girth.
The bachelors and male coquets of the Tahitians and French, with a sprinkling of all the foreigners in Papeete, the officers and crews of the war-ship Zelee and sailing vessels, smoked and endeavored to segregate vahines who appealed to them. The dark procureur general from Martinique had an eye for beauty, and the private secretary of the governor was in his most gallant mood, a rakish cloth hat with a feather, a silver-headed stick, a suit of tight-fitting black, and a tiare Tahiti over his ear, marking him among the other Lotharios.
The band was led by a tall, impressive native who both beat and hummed the airs to guide the others. A tune ended, the bandsmen hurried to mix with the audience, to smoke and flirt. The shading acacia-trees lining the avenues permitted privacy for embraces, kisses, for making engagements, and for the singing of chansons and himenes of scandalous import. Better than the Latin, the Tahitian likes direct words and candor in song.
French naval officers and sailors passed and repassed, or sought the obscurity of the mangoes or the acacias. One heard the sibilance of kisses, the laughter, and the banter, the half-serious blows and scoldings of the vahines who repelled over-bold sailors. In an hour the sedate and the older took leave; the governor and the procureur turned into the Cercle Militaire for whist or ecarte and a glass of wine, the carriages withdrew, and the band’s airs and manner of playing took on a new freedom and abandon. A polka was begun, and couples danced upon the grass, the ladies in their peignoirs, their black hair floating, and their lips chanting, their wreaths and flowers nodding to their motions.
In retired nooks where the lamp-lights did not penetrate ardent ones threw themselves into the postures and agitations of the upaupa, the hula.
Boys now began to light the flambeaux for the retraite. These were large bundles of cocoanut-husks and candlenuts soaked in oil, and they gave a generous flare. Suddenly, we heard the mairie-bell tolling. The band-leader climbed upon the roof of the kiosk, descended, and gave a vigorous beat upon the air for “the Marseillaise,” which ends all concerts.
It was quickly over, and seizing the flambeaux, all rushed from the Place du Gouvernement, lighting the way of the retraite, now more furious even than planned. The band struck up, “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night,” the drum and bugle made warlike notes, and down the rue de Rivoli we went madly toward the conflagration sighted by the leader. After the band and the flambeaux-bearers danced the jolly commoners, with here and there a more important pair of legs, an English clerk, a tourist, or an official, all excited by the music, the torches, and the running to the fire. The flambeaux reeled to and fro with the skipping and leaping of their carriers, the multitude sang loudly, and the music became broken as the leader lost control of his men. They came to the house of the hose-cart, and transformed themselves into firemen, laying down their instruments and harnessing themselves to the lines. Away we went again, now at top speed. Other carts with apparatus dashed into the Broom Road from side streets and caught up with us.
The pullers yelled warnings in Tahitian to those who might impede their way or be run over. The stir was tremendous, for fires were rare and greatly feared. The regulations of the possession and storage of combustibles were severe, even a wagon or handcart containing as little as one can of kerosene being compelled to fly a red flag.
After a mile we came to the fire, a Chinese restaurant beside a little creek and in a cocoanut-grove. The roof had fallen in and there were reports that a woman and two children had been killed. Two men with quart cans threw water from the stream on the edge of the blaze.
The little hose-carts, with a small ladder, arrived with eclat, native gendarmes clearing the road, and Frenchmen and natives shouting the danger of death by these formidable engines. They were of no purpose, the water-taps which were conspicuous in the main streets being absent here, and no water under pressure was available. They knew this, of course, but the hose was unreeled, and a dozen people tripped up by its snakelike movements, the while bandsmen and gendarmes roared out manoeuvers. By now a thousand were there. I counted roughly several hundred bicycles and two public automobiles, holding thirty persons each, came from the center of town, the enterprising owners canvassing the coffee-shops and saloons for passengers. These carryalls drew up by the stream within forty feet of the blaze, forcing the pedestrians and cyclists to retreat.
Lovaina appeared, puffing furiously. Vava was roused to a high pitch. He told me by signs how he had seen the fire and given the alarm to the mairie, or city hall, the bell of which tolled for an hour.
There was no wind, and the flames rose straight up, scorching the cocoanut-leaves, but unharming other houses within twenty-five feet. The crowd lingered until the last timber had fallen. After seeing that there was small danger to the adjoining buildings, and learning that the loss fell upon Chinese only, that no one had been hurt, and that a can of kerosene had exploded, interest in the conflagration dropped, and friends and acquaintances who had met chatted amiably on other subjects. The proximity of the fire and the marshy condition of the ground made it proper for the ladies with well-turned legs to raise their gowns high, displaying garterless stockings held up by the “native twist” above the calf. Accordions and mouth-organs enlivened the talk, and not until only charred boards remained did we leave.
Besides the occasional concerts of the band, boxing and moving-pictures made up the public night life of Papeete. Attached to the theaters were bars, as at the Palais, and these were the foci of those who hunted distraction, and the trysting-places of the amorous. One found in them or flitting about them all the Tahitian or part Tahitian girls in Papeete who were not kept from them by higher ambition or by a strict family rule. From Moorea, Raiatea, Bora-Bora, and other islands, and from the rural districts of Tahiti, drifted the fairest who pursued pleasure, and to these cafes went the male tourists, the gayer traders, the sailors, and the Tahitian men of city ways, the chauffeurs, clerks, and officials.
Boxing and cinemas were novelties in Tahiti, and though the bars were only adjuncts of the shows, they had become the scenes of a hectic life quite different from former days. The groves, the beach, and the homes were less frequented for merrymaking, the white having brought his own comparatively new customs of men and women drinking together in public houses. And there had crept in on a small scale an exploitation of beauty by those who profited by the receipts at the prize-fights, the cinemas, and the bars. The French or part castes who owned these attractions were copying the cruder methods of the Chinese.
Llewellyn, David, and McHenry were habitues of these resorts, and I not an infrequent visitor. We went together to a prize-fight, which had been well advertised. A small boy with a gong handed me a bill on the rue du Four, which read:
Casino de Tahiti
Ce Soir Vendredi
Pour le championnat des Etablissements francais de l’Oceanie
Grand Match de Boxe Entre MM.
Great Boxing Match Between MM. Moto Raa rahi i rotopu ia
Opeta (Raratonga) & Teaea (Mataiea)
10 Rounds
Moni parahiraa 1re 2f. 50 2me 2f. 3me 1f. 50
The bill said further in French and Tahitian that this was to be the climax of all ring battles in the South Seas between natives, the Christchurch Kid and Cowan, the bridegroom, being hors concours.
Every seat was reserved by noon. All day the automobile stages ran into the country districts to bring natives, and from Moorea came boat-loads of spectators. On the streets native youths emulated the combatants, and at every corner boys were at fisticuffs. The Casino de Tahiti was on the rue de Rivoli, a large wooden shed painted in polychromatic tints, and with a gallery open to the air for the band, which played an hour before all events to summon patrons. Groups were in the street by eight o’clock, many having been unable to buy seats, and others there merely to hear the music and to laugh. Many were Chinese, queueless, smartly dressed in conventional white suits and American straw hats. The storekeepers had come in from the country. The men heatedly discussed the merits of the boxers. Opeta of Raratonga was mentioned as the champion of the world–this part of it.
Smoking was not allowed inside, so not until the last moment did the men file in. Hundreds of women were long in their places, some white, many part white, and others Tahitians. They were in their best gowns, flirting, eating fruit and nuts, laughing, and talking. Every girl of the Tiare Hotel was there, and all the guests. I was wedged in between Lovaina and Atupu, and the latter stroked my leg often, as one does a cat or dog, affectionately, but without much thought about it. Lovaina, too, rubbed my back from time to time.
A picture preceded the fight. It was of cow-boys, robbers, and the Wild West, with much shooting. A half-caste explained it, and his wit was considerable, tickling the ears as the scenes tickled the eyes. The natives applauded or execrated the films as the Parisians do at the opera. They encouraged the heroes and cursed the villains. Lovaina was interested, but said:
“Those robber in picshur make all boy bad. The governor he say that maybe he stop that Bill ‘Art kind of picshur. Some Tahiti boy steal horse and throw rope on other boy for lassoo.”
When the screen was removed, a roped enclosure, a square “ring,” was disclosed. The announcer spoke in Tahitian of the signal achievements of the two fighters, of their determination to do their best then and there. The women cheered these declarations. Seated just below me was a red-headed French girl, with perhaps a slight infusion of Polynesian blood, who had a baby in a perambulator. Her strawberry plaits dangled temptingly as she cooed to the baby. She was for Opeta, the foreign competitor.
A white-haired Australian woman, with a strong accent, favored Teaea, and when the Raratonga youth was winning, shouted to Teaea:
“‘It ‘im ‘arder, Ol’ Peet! ‘E’s outa wind! Knock ‘is shell hoff!”
The Casino de Tahiti had two galleries, and in the topmost, at a franc, five sous each, sat the little gods, as with us. Others were perched on doors, on projections of cornices, and in every nook.
The fighters were naked except for breech-clouts. They were barefooted. They wore their hair longish, and it appeared like rough, black caps, which now and again fell over their faces and was flung back by a toss of their heads. They were handsome men, framed symmetrically, lithe, and healthy-looking. Their bodies soon shone with the sweat. Their eyes, as soft as velvet to begin, grew fiery as they punished each other. In truth, this punishment was not severe from American prize-ring standards. The islander was unused to blows, and the gloves were of the biggest size, such as those worn by business men in gymnasiums.
Opeta had as seconds American beach-combers; and Teaea, natives. They had all the pugilistic appurtenances of towels, bottles, etcetera, and fanned and rubbed their men between rounds as if they were matched for a fortune.
Teaea had a green ribbon in his loin-cloth. He was taller and heavier than Opeta, but showed his inferiority quickly. They danced about and fiddled for an opening, sparred for wind, and did all the fancy footwork of the fifth-class fighter, but they seldom came together except in clinches. The referee, the Christchurch Kid, was the martyr, for he had to pull them apart every minute. The rounds were of two minutes’ duration, and the rests one minute. After seven very tame rounds, the spectators became angered, and in the eighth Teaea went down, and took the count of ten on his hands and feet, warily watching his opponent. In the ninth, Opeta, excited by the demands of the gallery, slugged him in the head. Teaea sought the boards again, and the counting of ten by the referee began.
The Mataiea boxer was on his back, but his glazing eyes stared reproachfully at Opeta. The latter, now clearly the victor, glanced at the red-headed girl, who was dancing on the floor beside her perambulator and waving her congratulations. The house was on its feet yelling wildly to Teaea to rise. Those who had bet on him were calling him a knave and a coward, while Opeta’s backers were imploring him to kill Teaea if he stood up. The Raratonga champion became excited, confused and when Teaea, at the call of eight, cautiously turned over and lifted his head, he struck him lightly.
The inhabitants of the country districts vociferated in one voice:
“Uahani! Uahani!”
“Faufau! Faufau!” cried the gods.
“Foul! Foul! ‘E ‘it’ im, ‘hand’ e’s hon ‘is ‘ands hand kneeses,” exclaimed the Australian woman.
The audience took up the chorus in French, Tahitian, and English. Though Opeta had won them all by his ability and fairness and was plainly the better man, the sentiment was for the rules. The Christchurch Kid thought a moment, and conferred with the announcer, who talked with all the seconds. The spectators were insistent, and though loath to end the show, the Kid held up the gloved hand of the Mataiean.
The announcer declared him the “champignon” of Papeete, but naively declared that Opeta was still full of fight, and challenged the universe. The Raratonga man was dumfounded at the result of his forgetfulness, and gazed coldly and accusingly at the red plaits. The people, too, now regretted their enthusiasm for the right, which had shortened their program of rounds, and demanded that the battle go on. But the band had left, the lights were dimmed, and gradually the crowd departed.
The Australian waited to shake the hand of her knight, to whom she said:
“I bloomin’ well knew you ‘d do ‘im hup! ‘E’s got nothin’ hin ‘is right. ‘E’s a runaw’y, ‘e is.”
David and I went into the buffet of the cinema after the fight to hear the arguments over it, and he to collect bets. He had chosen the winner by the toss of a coin. The French Governor of the Paumotus was there, gaily bantering half a dozen girls for whom he bought drinks. We joined him with Miri and Caroline and Maraa and others, the best-known sirens of Papeete. They were handsome, though savage-looking, and they had lost their soft voices. Alcohol and a thousand upaupahuras had made them shrill. They smoked endless cigarettes. Some wore shoes and stockings, and some were barefooted. Their dresses were red or blue, with insertions of lace and ribbons, and they were crowned with flowers in token of their mood of gaiety.
David insisted on a bowl of velvet, three quarts of champagne, and three of English porter mixed in a great urn. The champagne bubbled in the heavier porter, and the brew was a dark, brilliant color, soft and smooth. It was delicious, and seemed as safe as cocoanut milk. I drank my share of it in the cinema cafe, and after that was conscious only vaguely of going to the Cocoanut House garden, where Miri and Caroline and Maraa danced nude under the trees by the light of the full moon.
Then came blankness until I awoke several hours after midnight. I was sitting on the curbing of the Pool of Psyche, and some one was holding my hand. I thought it must be Atupu or Lovaina, and groped for a moment before I could pull my senses together. I looked up, and saw a wreathed and bearded native, and then down and saw his attire, mixed man’s and woman’s, and knew he was one of the mahus who loafed about the queen’s grounds. I drew away my hand as from a serpent’s jaws, and clasped my head, which rocked in anguish. A horrid chuckle or dismal throaty sound caused me to see the Dummy standing in the gateway, looking contemptuously at me, and witheringly at my companion. I had a second’s thought of myself as a son of Laocooen.
The mahu got up and hastened away, and Vava put his hand on my shoulder and lifted me as a child to the road. He pointed toward the Annexe, and as I went haltingly with him, he now and again uttered unearthly cackles and bawls as if enjoying a farce I could not see. He, like the mahu, was one of those mishaps of nature assigned to play an absurd and sorry part in the tragicomedy of life in which all must act the roles assigned by the great author-manager until death puts us out of the cast. In that scene I myself was the buffoon of fate.
Chapter XVI
A journey to Mataiea–I abandon city life–Interesting sights on the route–The Grotto of Maraa–Papara and the Chief Tati–The plantation of Atimaono–My host, the Chevalier Tetuanui.
Life in the country made me laugh at myself for having so long stayed in the capital. The fever of Papeete had long since cooled in my veins. A city man myself, I might have known that all capitals are noxious. Great cities are the wens on the body of civilization. They are aggregations of sick people, who die out in the third generation. Greed builds them. Crowded populations increase property values and buy more manufactured luxuries. The country sends its best to perish in these huddlements. In America, where money interests boom cities and proudly boast their corruption in numbers, half the people are already in these webs in which the spider of commerce eats its victims, but ultimately may perish for lack of food. Brick and steel grow nothing.
I had made excursions from Papeete, but always carrying the poisons of the town with me. At last my playmates deserted me. Lying Bill and McHenry sailed on their schooner for the Paumotu and the Marquesas islands, Landers left for Auckland, and Count Polonsky for a flying visit to America. Llewellyn, though an interesting study, learned in native ways, and with comparisons of Europe and America, was too atrabilious, and, besides, had with his young partner, David, abandoned himself to the night life, the cinema bars, with their hilarious girls and men, the prize-fights, and the dancing on the beach in the starlight. Schlyter, the tailor, an occasional companion, was busied cutting and sewing a hundred uniforms for a war-ship’s crew.
I bethought me of the letter Princess Noanoa Tiare had given me to the chief of Mataiea, and with a bag I departed for that village at daybreak, after taofe tau for four sous at Shin Bung Lung’s Fare Tamaaraa. The diligence was open at the sides and roofed with an awning, and was drawn by two mules, with bells on their collars.
On the stage I paid twenty centimes a kilometre, or six and a half cents a mile. It carried the mail, passengers, and freight. In every district there was a mailbox on the fence of the chefferie, the chief’s office, and on the trees alongside the road at regular intervals, and the driver took mails from people who hailed him. Arriving at a chefferie, the stage halted, the district mutoi, or native policeman-postman, appeared leisurely, opened the locked box on the diligence, looked at ease over the contents, took out what he liked, and put back the remainder, with the postings of the chefferie.
A glance at the map of Tahiti shows it shaped like a Samoan fan, or, roughly, like a lady’s hand mirror. It is really two islands, joined by the mile-wide isthmus of Taravao. The larger island is Poroiunu or Tahiti-nui (big Tahiti), and the smaller Taiarapu, or Tahiti-iti (little Tahiti). Tahiti-nui is almost round; and Tahitiiti, oval. Both are volcanic, distinct in formation. They are united by a sedimentary piece of land long after they were raised from the ocean’s bed.
Mataiea is twenty-seven miles from Papeete, and well on toward the isthmus.
Most of our passengers were Chinese, and I realized the Asiaticizing of Tahiti. They were store-keepers, small farmers, or laborers. The Broom Road lay most of the way along the beach, back of the fringe of cocoanut and pandanus-trees, and between the homes and plantations of Tahitians and foreigners. I saw all the fruits of the islands in matchless profusion, intermingled with magnificent ferns, the dazzling bougainvillea, the brilliant flamboyant-tree, and a thousand creepers and plants. Every few minutes the road rushed to the water’s-edge, and the glowing main, with its flashing reef, and the shadowy outlines of Moorea, a score of miles away, appeared and fled. Past villages, churches, schools, and villas, the shops of the Chinese merchants, the sheds for drying copra, rows of vanilla-vines, beaches with canoes drawn up and nets drying on sticks, men and women lolling on mats upon the eternal green carpet of the earth, girls waving hands to us, superb men, naked save for pareus, with torsos, brown, satiny, and muscled like Greek gladiators, women bathing in streams, their forms glistening, their breasts bare; and constant to the scene, dominating it, the lofty, snakelike cocoanuts and their brothers of less height and greater girth.
At Fa’a a postwoman appeared. Before opening the mail-box she tarried to light a cigarette and to chat with the driver about the new picture at the cinema in Papeete. She commented laughingly on the writers and addressees of the letters, and flirted with a passenger. The former himene-house, which had been the dance-hall of Kelly, the leader of the fish-strike, was vacant, but I heard in imagination the strains of his pagan accordion, and the himene which will never be forgotten by the Tahitians, “Hallelujah! I’m a bum!” Kelly had gone over the water to the jails of the United States, where life is hard for minstrels who sing such droll songs.
In Punaauia, the next district to Fa’a, was a schoolhouse and on it a sign: 2 x 2 = 4.
M. Souvy, a government printer of Tahiti, had given the site out of his humble savings. By the sign, in his blunt way, he struck at education which does not teach the simple necessity of progress–common sense.
“Cela saute aux yeux,” he had said.
He was long dead, but his symbol provoked a question from every new-comer, and kept alive his name and philosophy. I never saw it but I thought of an article I had once written that led to the overturning of the educational system of a country. How all guide-posts point to oneself! Near the school-house, a dozen yards from the salt water, was a native house with a straw roof, a mere old shell, untenanted.
M. Edmond Brault, the government employee and musical composer, a passenger on the diligence, had with him his violin, intending to spend the day in company with it in a grove. He remarked the tumbledown condition of the house, and said:
“I have sat under that toil de chaume, that straw roof, and talked with and played for a painter who was living there quite apart from the world. He was Monsieur Paul Gauguin, and he had a very distingue establishment. The walls of his atelier were covered with his canvases, and in front of the house he had a number of sculptures in wood. That was about 1895, I think. I can see the maitre now. He wore a pareu of red muslin and an undershirt of netting. He said that he adored this corner of the world and would never leave it. He had returned from Paris more than ever convinced that he was not fitted to live in Europe. Yet, mon ami, he ran away from here, and went to the savage Marquesas Islands, where he died in a few years. He loved the third etude of Chopin, and the andante of Beethoven’s twenty-third sonata. You know music says things we would be almost afraid to put in words, if we could. If Flaubert might have written ‘Madame Bovary’ or ‘Salambo’ in musical notes, he would not have been prosecuted by the censor. We musicians have that advantage.”
“In America,” I replied, “we have never yet censored musical compositions, and many works are played freely because the censors and the reform societies’ detectives cannot understand them. But if our inquisitors take up music, they may yet reach them. For instance, the prelude of ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ and Strauss’ ‘Salome.'”
“No,” returned the Frenchman, quickly; “music would make them liberals.”
A little farther on, in the valley of Punaruu, the amiable violinist and pianist showed me the ruins of defense works thrown up by the French to withstand the attacks of the great chieftain, Oropaa of Punaauia, who with his warriors had here disputed foot by foot the advance of the invaders. These Tahitians were without artillery, mostly without guns of any sort, but they utilized the old strategy of the intertribal wars, and rolled huge rocks down upon the French troops in narrow defiles.
We saw from our seats through the shadows of the gorge of Punaruu two of the horns of Maiao, the Diadem. In the far recesses of those mountains were almost inaccessible caves in which the natives laid their dead, and where one found still their moldering skeletons. M. Brault touched my shoulder.
“Rumor has it that the body of Pomare the Fifth is there,” he said; “that it was taken secretly from the tomb you have seen near Papeete, and carried here at night. There are photographs of those old skeletons taken in that grotto of the tupapaus, as the natives call the dead and their ghosts. The natives will not discuss that place.”
It was from Punaauia that Teriieroo a Teriierooterai had gone to Papenoo to be chief. This was the seat of his ancienne famille. Here he had been a deacon of the church, as he was in Papenoo, because it meant social rank, and was possible insurance against an unknown future. The church edifice was the gathering-place, as once had been the marae, the native temple. This was Sunday, and I passed a church every few miles, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant vying. They had matched each other in number since the French admiral had exiled the British missionary-consul, and compelled the queen to erect a papal church for every bethel.
Along the road and in the churchyards the preachers and deacons were in black cloth, sweating as they walked, their faces beatudinized as in America.
Many carried large Bibles, and frowned on the merry, singing crew who went by on foot, in carriages and automobiles. Everywhere, in all countries, the long, black coat and white or black cravat are the uniforms of evangelism. In Tahiti I saw ministers of the gospel, white and brown, appareled like circuit-riders in Missouri; hot, dusty, and their collars wilted, but their souls serene and sure in their mission. They associated God and black, as night and darkness.
The sound of sermons echoed from chapels as we progressed, the voices raised in the same tone one heard in a Methodist camp-meeting in Kansas, and the singing, when in French, having much the same effect, a whining, droning fashion; without spirituality or art.
But why look for a moment at these unfortunates or listen to their dull chants when marvels of nature unfolded at every step! There was never such luxuriant vegetation, never such a riot of color and richness of growth as on every side. The wealth of the bougainvillea’s masses of lustrous magenta was matched by the dazzling flamboyant, trees forty feet high, and their foliage a hundred in circumference, a sheen of crimson. Clumps of bamboo as big as a city lot and towering to the sky, with the yellow allamanda framing the bungalows, and a tangle of bananas, lantana, tafeie, cocoas, and a hundred other fruits, flowers and creepers, made the whole journey through a paradise.
Around many cocoanut-palms were bands of tin or zinc ten or twenty feet from the earth. These were to foil the rats or crabs which climb the trees and steal (can a creature steal from nature?) the nuts. Every available piece of thin metal was used for this. The sheets were often flattened kerosene- and gasoline-cans and were drawn taut and smooth. These are impasses for the wily climbers.
“Ils ne passeront pas,” said the French; “Aita haere!” the Tahitians.
The road was good, but narrow, in few places room for two to pass except by turning out, skirting the beach at the water’s-edge, crossing causeways over inlets, and in admirable curves clinging to the hillsides, which bathed in the sea. Moving over a small levee we came to the pointe de Maraa, where was the Grotto of Maraa, a gigantic recess worn in the solid wall of rock, a dark mysterious interior, which gave me a momentary surge of my childhood dread and love of caves and secret entrances to pirates’ lairs. The diligence halted at the request of M. Brault, and he and I jumped out and ran to the grotto. In it was a lake with black waters, and down the face of the cliff, which rose hundreds of feet straight, dripped a million drops of the waters of the hills, so that the ground about was in puddles. The inside walls and arched ceiling were covered with a solid texture of verdant foliage, wet and fragrant. We found a little canoe fastened to a stone, and adventured on the quiet surface of the pond until at about eighty yards of penetration we came to a blind curtain of stone.
“This grot,” said M. Brault, “was for centuries the retreat of those conquered in war, sacred to gods, and a sanctuary never violated, like those cities of refuge among the Hebrews and Greeks. Now it is a picnic rendezvous, very dear to Papeete whites and to tourists. C’est la vie.”
Tahitian women passengers were adorning their heads with wreaths of maiden-hair and rare ferns from the cavern. Great lianas hung down the walls, and these they climbed to reach the exquisite draperies of the chamber. The farther we left behind the capital, the more smiling were the faces, the less conventional the actions and gestures of the people.
Papara was at hand, the richest and most famous of all the districts of Tahiti. The village was a few Chinese stores, a Catholic and a Protestant church, a graveyard, and a scattered collection of homes. I bade au revoir to my delightful companion, Edmond Brault, having determined to walk the remaining kilometers, and to send on my inconsiderable bag of clothing.
Lovaina had given me a note to the chief of Papara, Tati, whose father was Salmon, an English Jew, and whose sister was Marao, the relict of the late king, and known as the queen. His father was the first white to marry formally a Tahitian noblewoman. Pomare IV had generously granted permission for the high chiefess of Papara to ally herself with the shrewd descendant of the House of David, and their progeny had included the queen, Tati, and others celebrated in Tahitian life.
Tati welcomed me with the heartiness of the English gentleman and the courtesy of the Tahitian chief. He was a man of large parts himself, limited in his hospitality only by his means, he, like all natives, having thrown away most of his patrimony in his youth. He was the best-known Tahitian next to Prince Hinoe, but much abler than he. He knew the Tahitian history and legends, the interwoven tribal relations, the descents and alliances of the families, better than any one else. Such knowledge was highly esteemed by the natives, for whom chiefly rank still bore significance. The Tatis had been chiefs of Papara for generations, and had entertained Captain Cook.
He lived in a bungalow near the beach, handsome, spreading, and with a mixed European and indigenous arrangement and furnishing that was very attractive. I met his sons and daughters, and had luncheon with them. Tati, of course, spoke English fluently, yet with the soft intonation of the Tahitian. Some of the dishes and knives and forks had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson, who, said Tati, had given them to him when he was departing from Tahiti. Tati’s sister, a widow, was of the party, and together we went to the Protestant churchyard to her husband’s tomb. It was imposing and costly, and the inscription read:
In Memory of Dorence Atwater, beloved husband of arii inoore Moetia Salmon. Born at Terryville, Conn., Feb. 3, 1845. Died at San Francisco, Cal., November 28, 1910. As a last tribute to his name there was erected in his native state a monument with this inscription:
This memorial is dedicated to our fellow townsman, Dorence Atwater, for his patriotism in preserving to this nation the names of 13,000 soldiers who died while prisoners at Andersonville, Ga.
He builded better than he knew; some day, perchance, in surprise he may wake to learn:
He builded a monument more enduring than brass.
Tupuataroa.
The name given Atwater when he married Moetia Salmon was Tupuataroa, which means a wise man. Mrs. Atwater was rich and melancholy. She mourned her dead. Atwater had come to Tahiti as American consul, and had piled franc on franc in trade and speculation, with great dignity and success. He had been the leading American of his generation in the South Seas, and had left no children.
Tati said that when the church was dedicated–it was a box-like structure of wood and coral, whitewashed and red-roofed–three thousand Tahitians had feasted in a thatched house erected for the arearea. The himene-chorus was made up of singers from every district in Tahiti and Moorea. Tati had presided.
“We ate for three days,” he related to me. “More than two hundred and fifty swine, fifteen hundred chickens, and enough fish to equal the miraculous draft on the shores of Galilee. We Polynesians were always that way, Gargantuan eaters at times, but able to go fifty miles at top speed on a cocoanut in war.”
Tati would have me stay indefinitely his guest, but I had written to Mataiea of my intended arrival there, and though there were insistent cries that I return soon, I said farewell.
Tati himself walked with me to the bridge over the Taharuu River, one of the hundred and fifty streams I crossed in a circuit of Tahiti.
“My ancestor, the old chief Tati,” he told me, “cut down the sacred trees of our clan marae near by, the aitos, tamanus, and miros. He had become a Christian, as was fashionable, and at the instigation of the English missionaries destroyed many beautiful and ancient trees, statues, carvings, and buildings. The Tahitians who mourned his iconoclasm had a chant which said that the Taharuu River ran blood when their gods were dishonored.”
From the stream the vast domain of the plantation of Atimaono stretched to Mataiea. It had been planted in the sixties, when British demands for cotton, and the blockade and laying waste of the South in the American Civil War caused a thousand such speculations all over the world.
It was for this plantation, the most celebrated in Tahiti, that Chinese were imported, and a thousand had their shanties where now is brush. Those were the times that the Marquesas had their cotton boom, and lapsed, too. Upon a hill of this plantation the English manager, a former cavalry officer, had built himself a palatial mansion, and lived like a feudal lord, the most powerful resident of Tahiti. Travelers from all the world were his guests. Fair ladies danced the night away upon his broad verandas and drank the choicest wines of France. Scandal wove a dozen strange stories of intrigues, of a high official who sold his wife to him, of Arioian orgies, and all the associations of semi-regal rule and accountability to none. Cotton prices declined, the bubble burst in bankruptcy, the miserable death of the aristocrat, and the fury of cheated English investors.
The plantation was now owned by a storekeeper of Tahiti, prosy and disliked, who had fattened by ability to outwit the natives; but the glory had departed, and the place languished, ruins and jungle, the prey of guava and lantana. The neighborhood was known as Ati-Maono, “The Clan of Maon.”
The lines between village and country were not rigid, and often the hamlet straggled along the road for much of the district. Every kilometer there was a stone marking the distance from Papeete. One knew the villages more by the Chinese stores than by any other feature.
“You will find the Papara country full of oranges,” Fragrance of the Jasmine had said.
The fruit was as sweet and delicious as any I had eaten, and the trees larger than their parents of Sydney, Australia. I strolled along the road eating, speaking all who passed or were in sight within their gardens, and came to Mataiea, where I was to live months and to learn the Tahitian mind and language.
Ariioehau Amerocarao, commonly known as Tetuanui Tavana, or Monsieur le Chef de Mataiea, Tetuanui, and his wife, Haamoura, were the salt of the earth. The chief was a large man, molded on a great frame, and very corpulent, as are most Polynesians of more than thirty years. He was about sixty, strong and sweet by nature, brave and simple. His vahine was very stout, half blind from cataracts, but ever busied about her household and her guests. As chief and roadmaster of his district, Tetuanui received a small compensation, but not enough for the wants of his dependents, so a few paying white guests were sent to him by Lovaina. The house was set back from the Broom Road in a clearing of a wood of cocoanuts, breadfruits, badamiers, and vi-apples. The father of Haamoura had given the land to his daughter, and they had built on it a residence of two high stories, with wide verandas.
The chief and his wife had no children, but had adopted twenty-five. They had brought most of these to manhood and womanhood, and many were married. Perhaps their care, dots for the daughters, and estates for the sons, had made the parents poor. One was the blood son of Prince Hinoe, and was now a youth, and worked about the plantation of the chief. His christened name was Ariipaea Temanutuanuu Teariitinorua Tetuanui a Oropaa Pomare. He was a prince and very handsome and gentle, but he gathered the leaves from the volunteer lawn for the horses. There was an atmosphere of affection and happiness about the home I have not sensed more keenly anywhere else.
The Duke of Abruzzi’s photograph and one of the Italian war-ship Liguria, were on a wall in the drawing-room, with others of notable people whom the chief had entertained. He himself wore the cross of the Legion of Honor, which had been presented to him in Paris when he visited there many years before.
The house was raised ten feet from the earth, and the ground below was neatly covered with black pebbles from the shore. Shaded by the veranda-floors, which formed the ceilings of their open rooms, the family sat on mats, and made hats, sewed, sang, and chatted. They laughed all day. A dozen children played on the sward where horses, ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys fed and led their life. When rice or corn was thrown to them, the mina-birds flocked to share it. These impudent thieves pounced on the best grains, and though the chickens fought them, they appeared to be afraid only of the ducks. These hated the minas, and pursued them angrily. But the minas can fly, and, when threatened, lazily lifted themselves a few feet out of reach of the bills, and returned when danger was over.
The chief’s plantation extended from the sea to the mountain, altogether about ten acres, which in Tahiti is a good-sized single holding. Cocoanuts, breadfruit, limes, oranges, badamiers, mangoes, and other trees made a dense forest, and a hectare or more was planted with vanilla-vines that grew on the false coffee of which hedges were usually made. A hundred yards away a stream meandered toward the sea, and there women of the household sat and washed clothes.
They had no taro planted, though there was much about. Taro, the staple food of Hawaiians, either simply boiled or fermented as poi, was not a decided favorite in Tahiti. The natives thought it tasteless compared with the fei, so rich in color and flavor. The taro is a lily (Arum), and its great bulbs are the edible part, though the tops of small taro-plants are delicious, surpassing spinach, and we had them often on our table.
Our customary meals at eleven and at six were of raw oysters, shrimp, crabs, craw-fish, or lobsters; fish of many kinds, chicken, breadfruit, vi-apples stewed, bananas, oranges, feis, cocoanuts, and sucking pigs. The family ate sitting or squatting on the ground, but I had a table and silver, glass and linen. It is the way of the Tahitian. The big house, well furnished, was not inhabited by the chief’s family. It was their monument of success. They slept in one of several houses they had near by, and their elegant dishes were unused except for white guests.
On the beach at the river’s mouth the heron sat or stalked solemnly, and the tern flew about the reef. The white iitae lived about the cocoanut-trees.
From the broad veranda in front was a view of the sea, and all day and night the breakers beat upon the reef a mile away, now as soft as the summer wind in the lime-trees of Seville, and again loud as winter in the giant pine forests of Michigan. The fleecy surf gleamed and shimmered in the sun as it rolled over the coral dam, and when the sea was strong, there was another sound, the lapping of the waves on the sand a hundred yards from me. A little wharf had been built there by the Government, and a schooner arrived and departed every few days,