and whose amiability pleased me. She was embarrassed and shy, and
struggled like some girl, unaccustomed to society, to say some proper
things. But the grace of her diffidence was all the greater when one
noticed the security of position indicated by her voice when speaking in
a low distinct tone to others. At length we rose and adjourned to the
neighbouring house, where the feast had been set forth. This we were
allowed to dispense with under plea of a late breakfast, but for form’s
sake we looked at each separate thing, spread out in a long line of
Samoan good fare, on green banana leaves that stretched across the
house. Then we _papalagi_, (foreigners), returned to a Western soup
kindly prepared by Aigā, and our own bread and tea, and sardines, in
which fare Aigā joined, and talked to us and we to her, all stretched at
full length upon the mats.
Then our lady disappeared with some little show of embarrassment, and
had I known how much it cost her, I should have sympathized with her
sooner in the annoyance of her having to prepare her toilette for the
great official reception (_talolo_), which was to be the next function
of the afternoon--the nearest house was the scene of the dressing of
herself and her maidens. Through the dropped mats of the openings, girls
and women kept plunging in and out, carrying in dress mats, and beads
and garlands of flowers, and entangled, complicated cinctures and belts
of fruits and flowers, and woven bark--and bringing out the news of how
the dresses looked to the loungers sitting at a distance outside. And
once I saw carried in a fierce, cruel headgear that our lady was to
wear; the great helmet of blond hair, set with sparkling mirrors and
tall filaments, to be bound tight with silvery shells around an aching
head.
Then we went out to sit and wait on the other side of our guest-house,
in the shade toward the sea, while long shadows covered the great space,
and the sun itself became veiled and lit the scene with a tempered light
more like that of our northern summer. One might almost have imagined an
afternoon in some favoured, more poetic point in our coast at home, say
Newport on some exceptional evening. The great _mālie_ spread out
further than the reserved ground of any of our residences, and its edge
dropped suddenly to the sea before us. Once or twice a thatched house
stood on the verge of this rolling green, all carefully smoothed and
weeded like a lawn. To the left and right were small groves like the
wings of a theatre. Far off to one side curved the bay, with palm trees
stepping gradually into the sunlight. The sea was blue and green before
us, and faintly shining; far off in the haze of sunlight were Upolu and
Apolima--spots of blue. Nothing broke this space to the furthest dim
horizon, except where on the edge of the cliffs stood one hut through
which shone the colour of the sea and the foliage of the tree
overshadowing it.
Then our party came up and sat about us on the slope of the grass about
the house, and from the groves about us came the sounds of the drum-beat
and the call of war music. From behind the house, in a great circle, ran
out in a sort of dance, our hostess in full gala costume: naked to the
waist, kilted with costly mats held on by flower girdles--on her head
the great military cap. She held a little toy club in her hand; on
either side, with heavier strides, two of the giants, her attendant
chiefs, dressed and undressed in the same way, repeated her movements.
Some thirty paces behind her, two of her maidens followed these leaders,
turning round in a great circle of dance, spreading out their arms, and
the wide folds of their waist-cloths, and the lines of their garlands
were flung out by
[Illustration: AITUTAGATA. THE HEREDITARY ASSASSINS OF KING MALIETOA.
SAPAPALI, SAVAII, SAMOA]
their motion. In and out of the little grove danced back and forth a
crowd of armed men, who threw up their clubs and caught them again.
Right in the middle of the green before us, threading their path between
the princess and her girls, crouching to the ground, crawled or ran,
bending low, three men, all blackened, with green cinctures of leaves
wound round their heads, and short tails of white bark hanging down out
of their girdles. These were the king’s “murderers,” relics of a bygone
time when savage chiefs, like European sovereigns, used licensed crime
to rid themselves of enemies--or friends--against whom they could not
wage open war.
These whom we saw were only on parade. All this served but to recall a
former power and its historical descent. But the ancestors of these
official murderers of hereditary ancestry had been actively employed. At
the whispered word of the chief they tracked the destined victim,
risking their lives in the attack, and plunged into him their peculiar
weapon, the _foto_, the barb of the Sting Ray, which breaking in the
wound and poisonous withal, meant inevitable death.
They were called, as I make out, Aitutagata (Devil people). The display
lasted but a short time; hardly more than a few circlings by Aigā and
her people, then on a sudden all seemed to come up about us, and the
assemblage broke up into groups. Aigā bore with apparent confusion our
compliments. She was anxious to get away.
There was something inextricably touching in the case of this bashful
young person--indoctrinated with our ideas to some extent--apparently
realizing how we looked upon the scene, how different her dress and
actions from those of her white friends and sisters, and yet carrying it
all out to suit her position of princess and hostess; what was due to
us, and to the traditions of her race.
With evening came the need of change, and I wandered down to the
unfinished church begun by the Malietoa, of whom I told you. The massive
foundations of coral rock, against which the tide was washing, are
finished, as well as part of the walls of the church. In front is a
little island, planted with trees: to the left, at once rocks and high
trees; on the right, the surf broke again in a little cove with houses
and palm trees, standing high against the setting sun. Far off the
point, the outline of Apolima, more than ever like a submerged volcano
cone, and the long white line of the surf; and near me, almost under me,
a dark moving space in the water, where the tide washed more uneasily,
the submerged tomb of a woman called Siga (white), a former wife of
Seumanu. There was something that made one dream, in this grave, now
remembered, now forgotten, a reminder that all memory can
[Illustration: BUTTRESSES OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND TOMB OF SIGA
IN THE REEF. SAPAPALI, SAMOA]
be but temporary, and that the real end is where all ends and is
forgotten, and where, as the Spaniard says, “Dios empiezo.” I sat and
sketched a little, seated on the great foundation. Children and women
crowded around, and climbed up the space in front, where the great steps
should have been, and filed all around the projecting edge that runs
about the church. When I had done I rose, and turning the corner of the
narrow ledge, found that I had made a group of frightened prisoners.
Then I went to the deep pool near by, where the sea runs into the little
fresh water, and was smiled at by the good-natured face, just being
washed, of one of the murderers by inheritance, who had figured all
blackened that afternoon, with green leaves and a white hanging tail.
His wickedness was being washed off with his blacking: or rather, his
wickedness was all archæological, kept up as a proof of the former
dignity and power of the chief, and of the obedience of his men. For
these people seem never to have been grossly wicked or cruel; as I told
you, they were not cannibals or whatever they had that way, ages ago,
was condemned as bad. They have even been unwilling to exterminate their
enemies in their many wars: and when they could put an end to the
German, in this last war, they stopped their killing the moment the
enemy was beaten, as they imagined. An element of strong good nature
seems to persist at the bottom of their character.
That evening we had a _siva_, like other _sivas_, which I am unable to
describe, because I was so sleepy that my memory has not held over. I
lurked in the dark, behind our hostess, who did not dance. Her
missionary training and her position were against it, I suppose, but
also, perhaps, she did not dance well, or as well as others. Afterward
she lingered with us, in the late evening, as did the _taupo_ who had
danced. With them were her two girls, attendants, and one or two of the
elder women, along with some of our men who acted as chorus. Then
“quelque diable le poussant,” nothing would do for one of our own party
but that he should tease and beg for a dance with more undressing. The
older women seemed to enjoy the notion, which reminded them, perhaps, of
old days when they were able to be naughty, and had performed all sorts
of antics late at night, when the elders and the great people were gone
to bed. So gradually, from one dance to another, we came to one in which
the performers disrobe entirely for a moment, using some words that
represent and lay claim to the same beauty which the Venus of Naples,
she whom we call Venus Callipyge, attempts to look at, and certainly
shows. But it was all innocent and childish--the _taupo_ danced it, and
the young girls accompanied her with one older woman--and Aigā laughed
and was amused, but hid away behind us, ashamed. Then we made her dance
for
[Illustration: PRACTISING THE SEATED DANCE AT NIGHT. SAMOA]
a moment the usual dance, I say we, but it was not I--and as she seemed
to think that even that was dreadful enough--we parted with some
discomfort. I foresaw trouble, but whether our fair friend was not as
much annoyed by the relentless compliments paid to the beauty of others,
is more than I can make out, being a man.
In the morning we trotted off a few miles, to this present place
Sapotulafai, the headquarters of the great orator, and which is the
great political centre. We had a great dinner, at which I sat next to
the _taupo_ of the adjacent village, a giantess, whose name is not
insignificant, though people here are not apparently named, any more
than are people anywhere else, by name to suit them. Charlie interpreted
her name for me saying, “When you are on top of a cocoanut, and the wind
blows hard, and you are afraid of falling off, that is _Lilia_.” You
have seen a palm tree in a gale, and you can imagine the picturesqueness
of this definition of fear, in the wild swinging of the waves of the
branches.
We had a _siva_ in the afternoon, when a young chief danced with the
_taupo_ of his village, to whom he is engaged: She gave him some
occasional affectionate whacks of reproof at some remarks that distance
did not make clear; and we had a great “_talolo_” with the speech of the
great _tulafale_ of Samoa, and then a return speech, which was listened
to with some curiosity. Some devil inspired me to urge our
representative speech-maker to discuss the severe and mistaken view of
dancing taken up by the missionaries--I mean the brown clergy. They had
done all sorts of good, but they were crowding too much out in their
zeal, and the white missionaries were not so excessive--and so forth.
And Adams had made a remark that seems to me a deep one. Something more
is needed for these people of few occupations. If they are to live
to-day they are destined to a putting aside of the excitement of their
little wars, and they need some outlet in games that exercise them, and
keep up their appreciation of physical life and excellence. Anyhow,
these views were launched out at a risk, and in a few days, without a
doubt, will have gone all around Samoa.
My own reason was a nearer one. It grieved me to think that Aigā should
risk her church position, because she was polite according to Samoan
etiquette, and that the other girls, who did the same, to wit, gave us
dances, at the request of their fathers and superiors, should be placed
between divided duties. This had been an oppression to the mind ever
since we came; and perhaps after all, we may have done well.
In the evening, our own _taupo_, Faauli the daughter of the orator, gave
us a _siva_; she danced, and danced well, and so did Lilia, the daughter
of a great chief, a Catholic, and then we had the other _taupo_, who
danced again with the young chief to whom she was engaged. His dance was
certainly amusing to the imagination. The chorus was singing about
himself, in his honour, and he performed the steps, if I may so express
it. He and another with red girdles and black, furry loin-cloths, and
red leaves in the hair, and red bead necklaces, danced with the _taupo_
herself, dressed all in red and purple leaves. The dances were a dance
of the hammer, and the dance of the cocoanut, and in the glitter of the
palm-fire, the ballet of our fairy opera. And satiated with dances I
have tried to be quiet and to sketch until now.
Oct. 30th.
We shall leave to-morrow. I feel tired, a little saddened; I suspect
that sleeping on the floors at night, in draughts from the back-country,
and wandering occasionally, in the midday, among the hot thickets, may
have given me some little fever. The German manager of one of the
plantations was telling me a little while ago that there was danger in
this, though nothing like what he had seen in other countries. On that
account, he had lifted the flooring of the houses, built for his men,
Solomon or Marshall islanders, whose health was of course of importance
to him, during their contract time. After all this care, they will be
taken back, perhaps, to the wrong place, and I suppose, eaten by their
fellows, if they happen to land on the wrong spot, or at some
neighbouring village.
* * * * *
This afternoon we went to Sapapali, to take leave of Aigā who had been
so kind to us, and who seemed almost hurt at our not remaining. We found
her apparently sad and troubled, and I regretted that we had been
accompanied by the other Taupos of our locality. Not that they were not
kept in their places by the greater lady, for this rather timid and
amiable person knows perfectly well how to speak to people who are
socially below her, and nothing has interested me more than her various
shades of inflection in addressing others. But something has evidently
annoyed her, whether the break with the church on account of the _siva_,
or her girls having been indiscreet, or her having made some mistake
that I do not exactly understand. She was much teased by one of us about
some “tendresse de cœur,” and that may have annoyed her. And the praise
given to her little girls, and an attempt to get them away from her
control may not have been pleasant. When I had seen the rest of the
company pass by my sketching place, and I knew that the visit was over,
I went back alone to her house and found her among her girls prostrate
and in tears. But she came out to me, so as to be alone, and she spoke
as if we should misjudge her from Sunday-school views and not understand
that her parade at the head of her warriors, all undressed, was an
official duty to us. And then bade me sweetly good-bye--and but a moment
ago my curtain mats have been pushed aside by a messenger who has come
all this way at night to bring me flowers from her.
So that I am not in cause: I leave it to you to read. I feel almost as
if what I were writing to you were indiscreet enough. Remember that
there is little privacy here, and that the houses are half open, so that
one may almost rush in. In fact, were it not for the complication of
human nature, I cannot see how there could be any privacy. There is
privacy somehow or other, but not in our way. Outside the house there
may be ways of saying things, inside and out there are dictionaries of
signs, but they all have the most wonderful way of hearing, and there
are always eyes everywhere. I have remarked that since I have cultivated
the habit of sitting on the ground, I see more of everything, and I seem
to be able to watch more easily. But, as I said, privacy is relative:
nothing has struck me as more Samoan than an elopement which I almost
witnessed. The young woman ran away with some young man, along the
beach, in the presence of hundreds of people who, it is true, were not
exactly watching her. She was just as publicly caught and brought back,
cuffed sufficiently and scolded by her older sister, and I see her
occasionally, in a neighbour’s house, looking not so repentant as on the
first afternoon of her punishment. As I said, I am tired and sad--and I
wish you good-night across the ocean and land.
At Home in Vaiala,
Nov. 4th.
The end of our malaga was not so pleasant. When we left Sapotulafai last
week, I was ill and fevered, and suffered quite a little during our long
trip of fourteen hours at sea. We had to row it. There was no wind, and
our men, never over-energetic, had been up all night in the last
enjoyment of social delights. Once indeed, Seu scornfully took an oar,
but even with that, twelve good hours’ rowing is not bad work, and we
got back in the evening at eight, having left Savaii at six o’clock in
the morning. The light and colour were as usual: even with fever I could
occasionally see how beautiful all was, but I managed to sleep, and do
not remember anything in particular, unless it be the long-continued
song of the men rowing----
“Lelei. Apoli-ma!
O-le-e--O-le-e!”
Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 13th.
Yesterday, on Faatulia’s invitation, we rode over to the Papa-seea, the
Sliding Rock: only a little distance, some hour and a half from where we
are, so that by eight o’clock or so we were out in the rain, mounted on
the horses seared up with difficulty for the early start. Mine was a
horse owned by the boy Poki, who is an owner of horses--he has now
three, and his food for them is given by the village common. His still
more youthful friend, Sopo, hired his horse to Atamo and somebody else
fitted out Awoki and Charley who went with us. Samau, the _tulafale_,
and another of our crew were to go ahead and carry some European food
and our painting and photographing kit. As we passed along the beach,
which is, as you know, the street of Apia, we met Meli Hamilton and
Faatulia and Fanua, and little Meli Meredith, all mounted. Gathering
them together, under rather a gentle rain, we turned toward the woods
behind the town and cantered over a dyke, through a mangrove swamp,
where formerly must have been some coral inlet; then past some villages,
a few huts, and then into the forest. This is no description to you, but
perhaps I can interest you by letting you understand that the delicate
form of the great novelist, Mr. Stevenson, passes up or down this road,
of necessity, on his way to his Spanish Castle in the mountains. So that
when he begins to write South Sea stories, and is obliged to use local
colour, you shall probably admire some beautiful description of all or
part of the road.
In the woods we overtook our men, and dear Fagalo and Sué, whose bare
legs were paddling in the rain. A little path led through woods all
overgrown, in a narrow zigzag, over fallen trunks and under branches
beneath which we bent. The light fell through green high up, upon green
all around us; innumerable small trees and bushes, and occasionally
great trees whose trunks ended in high buttresses of rooting sharp and
thin, as if the trunk had been ravined. These are the trees which in the
old story-books of travel were supposed to furnish a ready-made
planking. Over all grew lianas and vines whose great long stems hung in
the air above us, or low enough to be pushed aside as we rode.
Notwithstanding the several varieties of growth--the Samoan wild orange
with double leaf and prickly stem, whose fruit was used in old times as
a soap to wash with, or the Fuafua, with broad leaves--the effect was
not unlike the appearance of our own forests, had it not been for the
lianas, and the occasional sheafs of wild banana that swung against our
horses’ heads. For an hour we went along in a scattered file, the
sunlight occasionally dropping in upon the great stillness around us.
Rarely a bird sung. Once we heard the running of a river. Then we came
to a stopping place; all got off; the girls
[Illustration: THE BOY SOPO. SAMOA]
skilfully ungirthing and unsaddling their horses, and tying them up to
the branches with long ropes. Over the trees that sloped down below us,
we could now see the harbour of Apia, from one end to the other, and we
kindled a fire of dead wood, to show the anxious friends at our end of
the bay that we had arrived. There are three waterfalls in this little
opening to which our narrow path had led us, and it leads no further and
nowhere else. Of the three falls, each divided from the others by wide
platforms of rock, the upper one is low and does not count. It is the
second and the third that are “slipping rocks.” The water rushes over
them in one or many falls, according to the season, and in some of the
channels the surface has become so slippery with moss that all one has
to do is to sit and be whirled into the pool below. We had just begun to
look down into the little hollow, edged on one side by a high rock upon
which ferns and vines and green bananas find a scanty foothold, when
Fagalo, throwing off her upper covering, seated herself on the edge of
the current, and in an instant had slipped off. And a laugh from below
echoed above as she rose from the pool and swam to the shore. By the
time that we had clambered down to meet her, she had come up and rushed
down again followed by Sué. The sight was charming: the pretty girls,
with arms thrown out and bodies straight for balance, their wet clothes
driven tightly to the hips in the rush of the water, had a look of gold
against the gray that brought up Clarence King’s phrase about Hawaii and
the “old-gold girls that tumbled down waterfalls.” In the plunge and the
white foam, the yellow limbs did indeed look like goldfish in a
blue-green pool. Further down there is a small rush of water into a
little hollow in the rock; the two girls in their play filled it easily,
like mermaids in too small a tank. Then we had lunch on banana leaves,
to which our wet friends contributed the shrimps that they had caught,
accidently as it were, and without thinking, in these moments of
“abandon.” We had also a mess of _palolo_ looking like very dark green
spinach, darker than the green leaves in which it was wrapped. Adams
insisted that this dish tasted quite like “foie gras,” which he also
said was quite as nasty a preparation.
To explain what _palolo_ is I should have told you of a little
expedition we made one morning last week, just on the return from our
malaga. But I was ill and had suffered too much from native food to
write any more upon similar subjects. Even all my liking for Meli
Hamilton and my admiration for the fullness and redness of her lips, and
for the gleam of her teeth, could scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling
of the great tree worms through which she crunched so gayly and
healthily at our last great Samoan dinner.
[Illustration: THE PAPA-SEEA, OR SLIDING ROCK. FAGALO SLIDING WATERFALL.
VAIALA, SAMOA]
At the waterfall, after our lunch, our men had theirs, and they sat with
heads all wrapped about with leaves, while the rain came down upon them;
for if there is anything that a Samoan detests it is getting his hair
wet. The rest of him does not matter. Meanwhile we smoked under our
umbrellas, pretty Meli Meredith half under mine, and Meli Hamilton under
a big banana leaf. For most of the others rain did not matter. They had
either gone into the water or were preparing to do so by sitting quietly
in the current. Otaota had prepared for the slide, and was stretched out
in the run of the waterfall that now swept over, now left uncovered her
extended limbs; for she leaned out upon one elbow, and dipped a hand in
the water, scattering it upon the other girls in a lazy way. Otaota was
“missionary” that day, and would not uncover the lovely torso about
which I have told you so much. Then the sun came out in a lingering,
gentle way, as if it dripped down from the sky, and with it all the
girls went over; Fanua and Meli Meredith and Otaota. And as we looked
down upon them, they swam over and hid behind the branchings of the
vines like so many nymphs of streams, their faces and arms glancing like
gold out of the green. Near them one of our men made a deep red in the
water by contrast. And now Awoki, with much hesitation, prepared, put on
the native lavalava, and tried his luck. Yellow he is to us, but he
looked white and pallid among all those browns and reds.