"Falling in love" with a person of the other sex on the mere report of
his or her beauty is a very familiar motive in the literature of
Oriental and mediaeval nations in particular. It is, therefore,
interesting to find such a motive in the Samoan story just cited. In
my view, as previously explained, beauty, among the lower races, means
any kind of attractiveness, sensual more frequently than esthetic. The
South Sea Islanders have been credited with considerable personal
charms, although it is now conceded that the early voyagers (to whom,
after an absence from shore of several months, almost any female must
have seemed a Helen) greatly exaggerated their beauty.
Captain Cook kept a level head. He found Tongan women less
distinguished from the men by their features than by their forms,
while in the case of Hawaiians even the figures were remarkably
similar (II., 144, 246). In Tahitian women he saw "all those delicate
characteristics which distinguish them from the men in other
countries." The Hawaiians, though far from being ugly, are "neither
remarkable for a beautiful shape, nor for striking features" (246).
The indolent, open-air, amphibious life led by the South Sea Islanders
was favorable to the development of fine bodies. Cook saw among the
Tongans "some absolutely perfect models of the human figure." But fine
feathers do not make fine birds. The nobler phases of love are not
inspired by fine figures so much as by beautiful and refined faces.
Polynesian and Melanesian features are usually coarse and sensual.
Hugo Zoller says that "the most beautiful Samoan woman would stand
comparison at best with a pretty German peasant girl;" and from my own
observations at Honolulu, and a study of many photographs, I conclude
that what he says applies to the Pacific Islanders in general. Edward
Reeves, in his recent volume on _Brown Men and Women_ (17-22), speaks
of "that fraud--the beautiful brown woman." He found her a "dream of
beauty and refinement" only in the eyes of poets and romancers; in
reality they were malodorous and vulgar. "All South Sea Island women
are very much the same."
"To compare the prettiest Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian, or even
Rotuman, to the plainest and most simply educated Irish,
French, or Colonial girl that has been decently brought up
is an insult to one's intelligence."
Wilkes (II., 22) hesitated to speak of the Tahitian females because he
could not discover their much-vaunted beauty:
"I did not see among them a single woman whom I could call
handsome. They have, indeed, a soft sleepiness about the
eyes, which may be fascinating to some, but I should rather
ascribe the celebrity their charms have obtained among
navigators to their cheerfulness and gaiety. Their figures
are bad, and the greater part of them are parrot-toed."