THE PACIFIC
“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose
gentle awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath;
like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried
Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures,
wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four
continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb, and flow
unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned
dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls,
lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds;
the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _Moby-Dick_.
First sighted by Balboa in the year 1513, and for more than two
centuries regarded by the Spaniards as their own possession, these
midmost waters of the world lay locked behind one difficult and
dangerous portal. During these centuries the Indian Ocean and the
Atlantic--but arms of the Pacific--were gloomy with mysteries. The
Spanish sailors used to chant a litany when they saw St. Elmo’s Fire
glittering on the mast-head, and exorcised the demon of the waterspout
by elevating their swords in the form of crosses. Mermaids still lived
in the tranquil blue waters. The darkness of the storm was thronged
with gigantic shadowy figures. The pages of Purchas and Hackluyt
offer no lack of supernatural visitations. Thus superstition joined
with substantial danger to guard the entrance to the Pacific. Balboa
himself was beheaded. Everybody who had to do with Magellan’s first
passage into the Pacific came to a bad end. The captain was murdered
in a brawl by the natives of the Philippines; the sailor De Lepe, who
first sighted the straits from the mast-head, was taken prisoner by the
Algerians, embraced the faith of the False Prophet, and so lost his
everlasting soul; Ruy Falero died raving mad. There was a fatality upon
the whole ship’s company.
Two years before Magellan’s memorable voyage, the western boundary of
the Pacific had been approached by the Portuguese, Francisco Serrano
having discovered the Molucca Islands immediately after the conquest
of Malacca by the celebrated Albuquerque. To stimulate exertion, and
to preclude contention in the rivalry of dominion between Portugal and
Spain, Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander the Sixth, drew a line down the
map through the western limits of the Portuguese province of Brazil,
and allotted to Portugal all heathen lands she should discover on
the eastern half of this line; to Spain, all heathen lands to the
west. So shadowy was the knowledge of geography at the time that this
apportionment of His Holiness left it doubtful to which hemisphere the
Moluccas belonged; and the precious spices peculiar to those islands
rendered the decision important. To ascertain this was the purpose of
Magellan’s voyage across the Pacific. In this waste of waters Magellan
made two discoveries: a range of small islands--including Guam among
its number--which he named Ladrones, on account of the thievish
disposition of the natives; and, at the cost of his life, one of the
islands which has since been called the Philippines.
The voyage of Magellan proved that by the allotment of Alexander the
Sixth, the Pacific belonged to Spain. And though for eight generations
the Spaniards were hereditary lords of the Pacific, they soon grew
greedy and jealous and lazy in their splendid and undisturbed monopoly.
Once or twice, it is true, the English devils took the great galleon:
but only once or twice in all these years. Lesser spoils occasionally
fell into the hands of pirates; for did not Dampier take off Juan
Fernandez a vessel laden with “a quantity of marmalade, a stately and
handsome mule, and an immense wooden image of the Virgin Mary”? Towns,
too, were occasionally sacked. But the Spaniards feared little danger,
and ran few risks. They grew richer and lazier, and troubled themselves
little in exploring the great expanse of the Pacific. They coasted the
Americas as far north as California, which they half-suspected to be
an island. The Galapagos, Juan Fernandez, and Masafuera they knew; a
part of China, a part of Japan, the Philippines, Celebes, Timor, and
the Ladrones. Voyages across the Pacific between Manilla and Acapulco
were not infrequent: but these voyages were sterile in discovery. The
traditional route, once through the Straits of Magellan, was to touch
at Juan Fernandez, coast South America, stand in at Panama, turn out to
sea again, appear off Acapulco, and then sail in the parallel of 13° N.
to the Ladrones. The Abbé Raynal states that the strictest orders were
given by the Spanish Government prohibiting captains on any account
to deviate from the track laid down on their charts during the voyage
between these places.
In the darkness of this uncharted ocean there was believed to stretch
a great southern continent of fabulous wealth and beauty: the Terra
Australis Incognita that survived pertinaciously in the popular
imagination until the time of Captain Cook. Members of the Royal
Society had proved, beyond doubt, that the right balance of the earth
required a southern continent; geographers pointed out how Quiros, Juan
Fernandez and Tasman had touched at various points of this continent.
Politicians and poets agreed that treasures of all kinds would be found
there,--though they varied in their appropriation of these Utopian
resources. The controversy over the existence of this continent was
vehemently revived in 1770 by the appearance of Alexander Dalrymple’s
_An Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the
South Pacific Ocean_. Dalrymple was an ardent advocate of the reality
of the Terra Australis Incognita, and to encourage an experimental
confirmation of his faith, he dedicated his handsome quarto: “To the
man who, emulous of Magellan and the heroes of former times, undeterred
by difficulties and unseduced by pleasure, shall persist through every
obstacle, and not by chance but by virtue and good conduct succeed in
establishing an intercourse with a Southern Continent.” Dr. Kippis,
Captain Cook’s biographer, writing in 1788, says he remembers how
Cook’s “imagination was captivated in the early part of his life with
the hypothesis of a southern continent. He has often dwelt upon it with
rapture.” The year following Dalrymple’s dedication, Captain Cook, back
from his first voyage in the Pacific, was commissioned by the Earl of
Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, to go out and settle once and
for all the mystery of the Southern Continent. So long as this mystery
remained unsettled, the Pacific stretched a great limbo pregnant with
the wildest fancies. Between the times of Magellan and Captain Cook
there was no certainty as to what revelations it held to disgorge.
It was in 1575 that Drake climbed the hill and the tree upon its summit
from which could be seen both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
“Almighty God,” this devout pirate exclaimed, “of thy holiness give me
life and leave to sail in an English ship upon that sea!” God heard
his prayer, and blessed him with rich pirate spoils in the Pacific,
and honoured him at home by a “stately visit” from the Queen. Yet he
died at sea, and in a leaden coffin his body was dropped into the
ocean slime. Cavendish continued the British tradition of lucrative
piracy, and in 1586 captured the great plate galleon. This stimulated
competition in high-sea robbery, until in 1594, the capture of Sir
Richard Hawkins daunted even English courage.
In 1595, Alvaro Mendana de Neyra, departing from the beaten track
across the Pacific on his way to occupy the Solomon Islands which he
had discovered twenty-eight years earlier, chanced upon a new group
of islands which he named Las Marquesas de Mendoca, in honour of his
patron Mendoca, Marquis of Cenete, and viceroy of Peru. He had mass
said on shore, refitted his vessels, planted a few crosses in devout
memorial, to die before he accomplished the object of his voyage, and
to leave the Marquesas unmolested by visitors until visited by Captain
Cook in 1774. It was in the Marquesas, of course, that Melville lived
with the cannibals.
The seventeenth century saw the Dutch upon the Pacific. During the
greater part of the century, England was busy with troublesome affairs
at home; the Spanish were too indolent to bestir themselves. Unmolested
by competition, the great Dutch navigators, Joris Spilbergen, La
Maire, Schouten, and, most famous of all, Tasman, drifted among the
islands of the extreme southwest. It was not until 1664 that the
French sailed upon the Pacific. To the end of the century belong the
buccaneers--Morgan, Sawkin, Edward Cooke, Woodes, Rogers, Cowley,
Clipperton, Shelvocke and Dampier. William Dampier, the greatest of
these voyagers, crossed the Pacific, missing all islands but New
Zealand. He added but little to the stock of knowledge that had been
already collected from the narratives of Tasman, or Schouten. W.
Clark Russell, in his life of Dampier, suggests it as probable “that
his failure, coupled with the despondent tone that characterises his
narrative, went far to retard further explorations of the South Seas.
It was no longer disputed that a vast body of land stood in those
waters. All that Dampier said in its favour was theoretical; all that
he had to report as an eye-witness, all that he could speak to as
facts, was extremely discouraging.” The myth of the entrancing beauties
and voluptuous charms of the South Seas owes nothing to Dampier except,
perhaps, a delayed inception. Of the inhabitants of the South Seas he
reports that they had the most unpleasant looks and the worst features
of any people he ever saw; and, says he: “I have seen a great variety
of Savages.” He speaks of them as “blinking Creatures,” with “black
skins and Hair frizzled, tall, thin, etc.”
Russell considered the depressing influence of Dampier’s recorded
adventures manifested in the direction given to later navigators.
Byron in 1764, Wallis, Mouat, and Cartaret in 1766, were despatched on
voyages round the world to search the South Seas for new lands; but
only one of them, Cartaret, deviated from Dampier’s track, confining
his explorations in this way to a glance at New Guinea and New Britain,
to the discovery of New Ireland, lying adjacent to the island Dampier
sailed around, and to giving names to the Solomon and other groups.
Both Byron and Wallis, it is true, did enter the archipelago of the
Society Islands, Wallis discovering island after island, until he
reached Tahiti. Wallis’s account of Otaheite--on the authority of
the London Missionary Society “to be pronounced so as to rhyme with
the adjective _mighty_”--and its people, occupies a great part of
his narrative. Though his reception was not without a show of arms
and bloodshed, the native women exerted themselves tirelessly to do
unselfish penance for the hostile behaviour of the native males. Oammo,
the ruling chief, retired from the scene, leaving the felicitation
of the strangers in the hands of his consort, Oberea, “whose whole
character,” according to the observations of the London Missionary
Society, “for sensuality exceeded even the usual standard of Otaheite.”
In the establishment of friendship that ensued, Wallis sent Lieutenant
Furneaux ashore to erect a British pennant, and in defiance of the
Pope, to take formal possession of the island in the name of King
George the Third. Hopelessly unimpressed by the whole transaction,
the natives took down the flag during the night, and for a long time
afterwards the ruling chieftains wore it about their persons as a badge
of royalty. Oberea’s hospitality was requited by a parting gift of some
turkeys, a gander, a goose, and a cat. Oberea’s live stock figures
repeatedly in the later annals of Tahiti.
Early in April, 1768, Tahiti was again visited by Europeans. Louis de
Bougainville was in Tahiti only eight days. But, if Bougainville’s
account be not the bravado of patriotism, during that period his ship’s
company seem to have outdone their English predecessors in sensuality
and open indecency. Several murders were committed more privately. And
the natives, with an eye for the detection of such matters, exposed
among the ship’s crew a woman who had sailed from France disguised
in man’s apparel. Bougainville attached to himself a native youth,
Outooroo, brother of a chieftain; Outooroo accompanied Bougainville
to France. Within a few weeks after sailing from Tahiti, Bougainville
discovered that Outooroo, as well as others aboard, were infected with
venereal disease. Wallis very specifically asserts that his ship’s
company were untouched by disreputable symptoms six months before, and
still longer after their visit at Tahiti. In any event, before the
first year had elapsed after the discovery of Tahiti, its inhabitants
were exhibiting unmistakable signs of their contact with civilisation.
In 1799, the London Missionary Society gave warning to the world: “The
present existence, and the general prevalence of the evil, is but too
obvious; and it concurs with other dreadful effects of sensuality, to
threaten the entire population of this beautiful island, if it is not
seasonably averted by the happy influence of the gospel.” The steady
extinction of the Polynesian races would seem to indicate that this
happy influence has, to date, not been efficacious. When Pope Alexander
the Sixth gave to the indolent Spanish the heathen for inheritance, His
Holiness was being used by a mysterious Providence as the guardian of
heathendom. It was not until he had been for over two centuries and a
half in his tomb, that the heretical and more enterprising English came
to dispel the Egyptian darkness that hung protectingly over most of
the islands of the Pacific, and to expose a competent barbarism to the
devastating aggressions of civilisation.
Everybody knows how in 1769 the Royal Society, discovering that there
would happen a transit of Venus, and that this interesting astronomical
event would be best observed from some place in the Pacific, hit upon
James Cook--Byron, Wallis and Cartaret all being in the Pacific at
the time--master in the Royal Navy, to command the expedition. The
Marquesas were chosen as the place for the observation; but while the
expedition was being fitted out, Captain Wallis returned to England,
bringing news of the discovery of Tahiti. So well known is the story
of Captain Cook that few can boast the distinction of total ignorance
of his three voyages to the Pacific,--the first in command of an
astronomical expedition, the second in search of a Southern Continent,
the third in quest of a Northwest Passage; of his discoveries and
adventures in every conceivable part of the Pacific; of his repeated
returns to Tahiti; of his finally being killed on the island called by
him Owhyhee, murdered despite the fact that he had shown a power of
conciliation granted to no other navigator in these seas. For, a long
time ago, there lived, on the island of Hawaii, Lono the swine-god.
He was jealous of his wife, and killed her. Driven to frenzy by the
act, he went about boxing and wrestling with every man he met, crying,
“I am frantic with my great love.” Then he sailed away for a foreign
land, prophesying at his departure: “I shall return in after times on
an island bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs.” When, after a
year’s absence, Cook returned to Hawaii, he arrived the day after a
great battle, and the victorious natives were absolutely certain that
Cook was the great swine-god, Lono, who long ages ago had departed mad
with love, now, to add lustre to their triumph, returned on an island
bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs. This attribution of deity was
hardly complimentary to Cook’s crew. And in time the islanders tired
of their enthusiasm and the expense of entertaining strolling deities.
After sixteen days of prodigal hospitality, the natives began stroking
the sides and patting the bellies of the sailors, telling them, partly
by signs, partly by words, it was time to go. They went. But a week
afterwards the ship returned. There was a quarrel. Among some people a
quarrel leads to a fight. In a fight somebody naturally gets killed.
Or, it may have been,--Walter Besant suggests,--that perhaps it may
have occurred to some native humourist to wonder how a god would look
and behave with a spear stuck right through him. Cook fell into the
water, and spoke no more.
In his life, as in his death, Cook enjoyed all the successes. Boswell
dined with him at Sir John Pringle’s on April 2, 1776, and reported the
glowing event to Dr. Johnson. A snuff-box was carved out of the planks
of one of his vessels, and presented to James Fenimore Cooper. Fanny
Burney records with pride her father’s meeting the famous navigator,
whom she herself met in society and in her own home. Joseph Priestly
contemplated accompanying Cook to the South Seas. An artist--W.
Hodges--was officially appointed to accompany him to perpetuate his
exploits in oil. He read learned papers before the Royal Society, for
one of which the counsel adjudged him the Copley Gold Medal. Six times
was his portrait painted, and once was it seriously proposed that Dr.
Johnson be appointed his official biographer. Not even by Omai, a
native of Tahiti that Captain Furneaux brought to England, was Captain
Cook’s glory eclipsed. And Omai was received by the King, was painted
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was laden with gifts when he was taken back
to Tahiti by Captain Cook on his third voyage. Omai, too, attended
meetings of the Royal Society, and it is to his credit that he behaved
himself fairly well. It was regretted by the Directors of the London
Missionary Society that though “great attention was paid to him by some
of the nobility, it was chiefly directed to his amusement, and tended
rather to augment than to diminish his habitual profligacy.” In 1785-6,
there was repeatedly performed at Covent Garden Theatre a pantomime
named after him. The characters, besides Omai, were Towha, the Guardian
Genius of Omai’s Ancestors; Otoo, Father of Omai; Harlequin, Servant
to Omai. To give a blend of edification to romance, the performance
included, so a surviving play-bill announces, “a Procession exactly
representing the dresses, weapons and manners of the Inhabitants of
Otaheite, New Zealand, Tanna, Marquesas, Friendly, Sandwich and Easter
Islands, and other countries visited by Captain Cook.” In 1789, so
vividly was the tragic end of Captain Cook still mourned, that at the
Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, was presented a spectacular tribute
posted as _The Death of Captain_. It was “a Grand Serious Pantomimic
Ballet, in Three Parts, as now exhibiting in Paris with uncommon
applause, with the Original French Music, New Scenery, Machinery, and
other Decorations.” This performance may have been inspired by an
_Ode on the Death of Captain Cook_ penned by Miss Seward, the Swan of
Lichfield: an ode praised by her fellow-townsman, Dr. Johnson. In 1774
there appeared in London “An Epistle from Oberea, Queen of Otaheite,
to Joseph Banks, Esq., translated by T. Q. Z., Esq., Professor of
the Otaheite Language in Dublin, and of all the Languages of the
Undiscovered Islands in the South Seas, enriched with Historical and
Explanatory Notes,” and so novel and popular was the South Sea manner,
that its author was mistaken for a wit, and his efforts at humour
repeatedly and laboriously imitated. As a corrective to such levity,
there appeared in 1779 an effusion in verse, adorned with vignette
depicting Tahitian women dancing, entitled _The Injured Islanders; or,
The Influence of Art upon the Happiness of Nature_. There is no lack
of evidence to prove that the exploits of Captain Cook brought the
South Seas, and especially Tahiti, into exuberant and irresponsible
popularity. Nor did business enterprise nap during the festivities.
Information which had been received of the great utility of the
bread-fruit, induced the merchants and planters of the British West
Indies to request that means might be used to transplant it thither.
For this purpose a ship was benevolently commissioned by George the
Third: the _Bounty_, commanded by Lieutenant Bligh. The voyage of the
_Bounty_ ended in a horrible tragedy and an intensely interesting
romance. The story of the mutiny of the _Bounty_, and its astonishing
sequels, joined further to vitalise the interest in the South Seas. A
frigate, significantly called the _Pandora_, was sent out from England
to Tahiti to seize the _Bounty_ mutineers. Though the _Pandora_ was
despatched as a messenger of justice, the usual course of festivity,
amusement and debaucheries was uninterrupted during the continuance of
the ship at Tahiti. And the year following, with British doggedness,
Captain Bligh returned to accomplish the purpose of his former
voyage which had been frustrated by mutiny. In 1793, the _Daedalus_,
Vancouver’s storeship, stopped at Tahiti, leaving behind a Swedish
sailor with a taste for savagery. The same year an American whaler, the
_Matilda_, was wrecked off Tahiti, and the crew, delighted at their
good fortune, betrayed no inclination for an immediate departure.
But while the frivolous, the sentimental, and the ungodly were busy
converting Tahitian savagery into a Georgian idyll, the well-starched
Wesleyan conscience crackled in horror at the black unredemption of the
South Sea heathen. “The discoveries made in the great southern seas by
the voyages undertaken at the command of his present majesty, George
the Third,” says a spokesman for the community, “excited wonderful
attention, and brought, as it were, into light a world till then almost
unknown. The perusal of the accounts of these repeated voyages could
not but awaken, in such countries as our own, various speculations,
according as men were differently affected. But when these islands were
found to produce little that would excite the cupidity of ambition, or
answer the speculations of the interested”--well, then it was that the
protestant conscience bestirred itself, and on September 25, 1795,
founded the London Missionary Society. It celebrated its first birthday
by determining to begin work with the islands of the southern ocean,
“as these, for a long time past, had excited peculiar attention. Their
situation of mental ignorance and moral depravity strongly impressed on
our minds the obligation we lay under to endeavour to call them from
darkness into marvellous light. The miseries and diseases which their
intercourse with Europeans had occasioned seemed to upbraid our neglect
of repairing, if possible, these injuries; but above all, we longed to
send to them the everlasting gospel, the first and most distinguished
of blessings which Jehovah has bestowed upon the children of men.”
A select committee of ministers, approved for evangelical principles
and ability, was appointed to examine the candidates for the
mission--who applied in great numbers--as to their views, capacity,
and “knowledge in the mystery of godliness.” Thirty missionaries
were chosen: four ministers, six carpenters, two shoemakers, two
bricklayers, two tailors (one of whom, “late of the royal artillery”),
two smiths, two weavers, a surgeon, a hatter, a cotton manufacturer, a
cabinet maker, a harness maker, a tinsmith, a cooper, and a butcher.
There were three women and three children also in the party. On August
10, 1796, on the ship _Duff_, commanded by Captain Wilson, who had
been wonderfully converted to God, this band, in chorus with a hundred
voices, sang “Jesus, at thy command--we launch into the deep” as they
sailed out of Spithead. The singing, it is said, produced “a pleasing
and solemn sensation.” On Sunday, March 5, 1797, after an uneventful
voyage, the _Duff_ dropped anchor at Tahiti. Seventy-four canoes came
out to welcome the strangers and broke the Sabbath by crowding about
the decks, “dancing and capering like frantic persons.” Nor was the
first impression made upon the Missionaries entirely favourable; “their
wild disorderly behaviour, strong smell of cocoa-nut oil, together
with the tricks of the arreoies, lessened the favourable impression we
had formed of them; neither could we see aught of that elegance and
beauty in their women for which they had been so greatly celebrated.”
Conversation with the natives was facilitated by the presence of two
tattooed Swedes--one formerly of the crew of the _Matilda_, the other
left by the _Daedalus_. During sermon and prayer the natives were
quiet and thoughtful, “but when the singing struck up, they seemed
charmed and filled with amazement; sometimes they would talk and
laugh, but a nod of the head brought them to order.” Next day,--for
they arrived on the Sabbath,--some of the missionaries landed and were
presented with the house King Pomare had built for Captain Bligh. This
important matter settled, the chief thought it time to enquire after
entertainment; “first sky-rockets, next the violin and dancing, and
lastly the bagpipe.” Lacking such diversions, the missionaries offered
a few solos on the German flute,--and “it plainly appeared that more
lively music would have pleased them better.”
Domestic arrangements established, to the great diversion of the
natives, the missionaries tried to get some clothes on some of them.
The queen had to rip open the garments, it is true, to get into them;
but one Tanno Manoo, who was given a warm week-day dress, and a showy
morning gown and petticoat for the Sundays, “when dressed, made a very
decent appearance; taking more pains to cover her breasts, and even to
keep her feet from being seen, than most of the ladies of England have
of late done.” The natives were deeply perplexed by the proprieties of
the Missionaries, and especially by what to them seemed the unnatural
chastity of the men.
Since the Missionaries had resolved to distribute their blessings, they
sent a party of brethren to make investigations on the Marquesas. The
first visitors the ship received from the shore were “seven beautiful
young women, swimming quite naked, except for a few green leaves
tied round their middle; nor did our mischievous goats even suffer
them to keep their green leaves, but as they turned to avoid them
they were attacked on each side alternately, and completely stripped
naked.” Such, too, was their “symmetry of features, that as models
for the statuary and painter their equals can seldom be found.” As
they danced about the deck, frequently bursting out into mad fits of
laughter, or talking as fast as their tongues could go, surely they
must have convinced more than one of the meditative brethren of the
total depravity of man. Nor did these shameless savages confine their
excursions to the decks. “It was not a little affecting to see our own
seamen repairing the rigging, attended by a group of the most beautiful
females, who were employed to pass the ball, or carry the tar-bucket,
etc.; and this they did with the greatest assiduity, often besmearing
themselves with the tar in the execution of their office. No ship’s
company, without great restraints from God’s grace, could ever have
resisted such temptations.”
Harris and Crook, two of the brethren, daring temptation, decided to
stay at the Marquesas, and were moved ashore. But before the _Duff_
sailed back to Tahiti, Harris was found on the shore about four
o’clock one morning “in a most pitiable plight, and like one out of
his senses.” It appears that the Marquesan chief Tenae, taking Crook
upon an inland jaunt, had departed, conferring upon Harris all the
privileges of domesticity. Tenae’s wife, sharing her husband’s ideas
of hospitality, was troubled at Harris’ reserve. So, “finding herself
treated with total neglect, became doubtful of his sex,” says the
London Missionary Society in a report dedicated to George the Third,
“and acquainted some of the other females with her suspicion, who
accordingly came in the night, when he slept, and satisfied themselves
concerning that point, but not in such a peaceable way but that they
awoke him. Discovering so many strangers, he was greatly terrified;
and, perceiving what they had been doing, was determined to leave a
place where the people were so abandoned and given up to wickedness;
a cause which should have excited a contrary resolution.” Harris was
forty years old at the time, and by trade a cooper.
Crook, however, remained in the Marquesas for eighteen months, where,
alone, he tried to enlighten and improve the natives. The Marquesas had
a bad reputation among whalemen, and though they had been occasionally
visited by enterprising voyagers--by Fanning, Krusenstern, Porter,
and Finch--they for long remained especially virulent in their native
depravity. It is true that Crook returned after many years to place
among the Marquesans four converted natives from the Society Islands.
In 1834, two missionaries from England, accompanied by Darling from
Tahiti and several converted natives, recommenced the arduous work of
evangelising this ferocious people. During four years the faithful
Stallworthy patiently toiled at his station, when in 1838 a French
frigate landed two Catholic priests in the very and the only spot then
cultivated by an English protestant labourer. These fellow-workers in
Christ competed for the souls of heathens. Though, in 1839, to even
the odds, Stallworthy received a reinforcement of one of his English
brethren, after two years the English missionaries found it impossible
“to maintain usefully their ground against the united influence of
heathen barbarism, popish craft, French power, and French profligacy.”
Thus “ravished from the Protestant charity that had so long watched for
its salvation,” the Marquesans, when discovered by Melville, were in
large part virgin in their barbarism.
At Tahiti, the brethren of the London Missionary Society continued to
work unrestingly, and against incredible discouragement. The natives
were, as Captain Cook discovered, “prodigious expert” as thieves. One
snatcher-up of unconsidered trifles, when by way of punishment chained
to a pillar with a padlock, not only contrived to get away, but to
steal the padlock. Yet, by the representation of the London Missionary
Society, “their honesty to one another seems unimpeachable,” and they
cultivated a Utopian sense of property: “They have no writing or
records, but memory or landmarks. Every man knows his own; and he would
be thought of all characters the basest, who should attempt to infringe
on his neighbour, or claim a foot of land that did not belong to him,
or his adopted friend.” Indeed, despite the reprobation dealt out to
them in tracts compiled for Sunday-school edification (Mrs. F. L.
Mortimer’s _The Night of Toil_ being a typically diverting libel), the
London Missionary Society, in its official reports, was--paradoxically
enough--their most convincing apologist. The natural beauties of their
country were again expatiated upon to the glory of the First Artist.
So prodigal was the natural abundance of Tahiti that the brethren
glorified it by converting it into a temptation. One of the brethren
wrote in his journal: “O Lord, how greatly hast thou honoured me,
that thousands of thy dear children should be praying for _me_, a
worm! Lord, thou hast set me in a heathen land, but a land, if I may
so speak, with milk and honey. O put more grace and gratitude into
my poor cold heart, and grant that I may never with Jeshurun grow
fat and kick.” The natives themselves were untroubled by any such
compunctions. “Their life is without toil,” the brethren reported,
“and every man is at liberty to do, go and act as he pleases, without
the distress of care or apprehension of want: and as their leisure is
great, their sports and amusements are various.” Their personal beauty,
their almost ostentatious cleanliness, their boundless generosity,
were by the London Missionary Society insisted upon. The best of them,
however, lived “in a fearfully promiscuous intercourse,” and emulated
the classical Greeks in infanticide and other reprehensible practices.
Yet do the brethren allow that “in their dances alone is immodesty
permitted; it may be affirmed, they have in many instances more refined
ideas of decency than ourselves. They say that Englishmen are ashamed
of nothing, and that we have led them to public acts of indecency
never before practised among them.” But then, as the London Missionary
Society says in another place: “Their ideas, no doubt, of shame and
delicacy are very different from ours; they are not yet advanced to any
such state of civilisation and refinement.” At their departure from
native custom, however, they were untroubled by contrition. When asked
“what is the true atonement for sin?” they answered, “Hogs and pearls.”
When the pleasant novelty of being exhorted and preached to wore off,
they did not behave impeccably during the devotions of the brethren.
They often cried out “lies” and “nonsense” during the sermon. At other
times they tried to make each other laugh by repeating sentences after
the brethren, or by playing antics, and making faces. Many of the
natives used to lie down and sleep as soon as the sermon began, while
“others were so trifling as to make remarks upon the missionaries’
clothes, or upon their appearance. Thus Satan filled their hearts
with folly, lest they should believe and be saved.” All the best
inducements the brethren could hold out to tempt them into “the divine
life” moved them not. “You talk to us of salvation, and we are dying,”
they said; “we want no other salvation than to be cured of our diseases
and to live here always, and to eat and talk.” So unappreciative were
they of the efforts of the brethren that they explained the presence
of the missionaries in Tahiti as growing out of a sensible desire
to escape from the ugliness and worry and brutality of European
civilisation. As for the lacerated solicitude and strange unselfishness
of the brethren to confer upon each of them a soul with all of its
pestering responsibilities: that, they found totally incomprehensible.
[Illustration: “We are going to church, you see; and Kanoa, my Hawaiian
associate, is blowing a shell to call the people to meeting, as we have
no bell. Kanoa’s wife, with one of her children is just behind us. Be
sure to look at the king, son of the one who was killed, in his long
shirt, and under his umbrella. The queen will come too, for both are
very regular in their attendance; and, what is better still, we hope
they are Christians.
“You may say, perhaps, that some things in this picture look more like
breaking the Sabbath than keeping it; and you are quite right.
“The woman whom you see is a heathen, carrying her husband’s skull
as she goes on a visit to some other village. A party of the natives
are pressing scraped cocoanuts in an oil-press, to get the oil to
buy tobacco with. The dog is one of the many, as heathenish as their
masters.”
From _Story of the Morning Star_,
By Rev. Hiram Bingham.
EVANGELIZING POLYNESIA]
Excluding all considerations of intellect--in which both the
Missionaries and the Polynesians seem to have been about equally
endowed--the abyss between the brethren and the heathen was the abyss
that separated John Knox from Aristophanes and the Greek Anthology:
the abyss between the animal integrity of classical antiquity and the
Hebraic heritage of the agonised conscience. Reason may pass back and
forth over this chasm: but no man once touched by the traditions of
Christianity can ever again sling his heart back across the abyss.
If he attempt the feat--as witness the _Intimate Journals_ of Paul
Gauguin--he but adds corruption to crucifixion, and there is no doubt
as to the last state of that man.
If the fall from innocence was begun in Eden, it was sealed beyond
redemption in Bethlehem. For at the time of the inception of
Christianity, the pagan world was going to its doom, and its death
agonies were frightful in the extreme. Something had to be done to
save humanity,--and something drastic. And humanity--which was at the
same time the priest and the victim--found in the cross the justest
symbol of its triumph in utter human defeat. More effectively to
slander this world, Heaven was set up in libellous contrast; in order
to heap debasement upon the flesh, the spirit was opposed to it as
an infinitely precious eternal entity, tainted by contact with its
mortal habitation. Blessedness lay not in harmony, but in division,
and utter confusion was mistaken for total depravity. “For the flesh
lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these
are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things
that ye would.” But these things classical antiquity did--being given
over to a reprobate mind, so St. Paul tells us. The Wesleyan brethren
found in Polynesia the same untroubled indulgence in “unrighteousness,
fornication and wickedness,” that had so troubled St. Paul. But in
Tahiti there were no signs of the intellect that classical antiquity
exhibited in the days of its reprobation. And though the Polynesians
seemed to have thriven on unrighteousness, the brethren itched to
infect them with misgivings, and this in a Holy Name. Melville
was profoundly stirred to loathing at these efforts: a loathing
heightened by the later contentions introduced into Tahiti by the rival
proselyting of French Catholic missionaries. Lost in doubt and shame at
such spectacles, in _Clarel_ he thus invokes Christ:
“By what art
Of conjuration might the heart
Of heavenly love, so sweet, so good,
Corrupt into the creeds malign
Begetting strife’s pernicious brood,
Which claimed for patron thee divine?
Anew, anew,
For this thou bleedest, Anguished Face;
Yea, thou through ages to accrue,
Shall the Medusa shield replace:
In beauty and in terror too
Shall paralyse the nobler race--
Smite or suspend, perplex, deter--
Tortured, shall prove the torturer.”
The brethren in Tahiti were without any of Melville’s misgivings.
Their faith was extraordinary. No less extraordinary was the native
imperviousness to salvation. After the brethren had ceased to be an
amusing novelty with gifts to bestow, the natives submitted them
to neglect and mockery. Revolts against King Pomare and constant
war kept the brethren in peril of their lives without releasing
them to celestial jubilation. The Napoleonic wars cut them off from
communication with England. During the first twelve years they heard
from home only three times. These days of fruitless trial sifted the
party. Many of the brethren seized any opportunity that offered to
sail away on chance trading vessels. Of the seven who remained, two
died. In 1801 eight new brethren came out to reinforce the number, then
reduced to four. In 1804 old King Pomare died, and his son Oto became
King under the title Pomare II. In the wars that followed, the mission
seemed broken up: their house was burned, the printing press destroyed,
and six of the brethren removed from Tahiti to Huahine. Two remained,
however, to carry on the forlorn hope. But after all these years
Pomare’s heart began to soften. His gods seemed to be standing him in
little stead. Defeated in battle, he escaped to Eimeo, and invited
the missionaries to follow him. Here he ate a sacred turtle, and when
no harm came to him he dared still further. Meanwhile it was proposed
in England that proselyting in Polynesia be discontinued, since after
sixteen years not one conversion had been effected. But those of
undaunted faith protested. The ship bearing fresh supplies and news of
the revived determination of those at home to prosecute the work was
met in mid-ocean with the cargo of the rejected idols of the Tahitians.
In a church seven hundred and twelve feet long, with twenty-nine doors
and three pulpits, all paid for by himself,--the church in which
Melville witnessed Sunday devotion--King Pomare had himself moistened
on the forehead with the water of life.
Backed by their royal patron, the Missionaries undertook to convert
Tahiti into a Polynesian Chautauqua. As Mrs. Helen Barrett Montgomery
says, in her _Christus Redemptor_: “We cannot follow the glowing story
of how the King had a code of laws made and read it to seven thousand
of his people, who, by solemn vote, made these the law of the land.” In
1839, Captain Hervey, in command of a whale-ship, reported of Tahiti:
“It is the most civilised place I have been at in the South Seas. They
have a good code of laws and no liquors are allowed to be landed on the
island. It is one of the most gratifying sights the eye can witness
to see, on Sunday, in their church, which holds about four thousand,
the Queen near the pulpit with all her subjects about her, decently
apparelled and seemingly in pure devotion.” Three years later, Melville
attended one of these services, and was less favourably impressed.
In 1823, the French establishment of the _Œuvre de la propagation de
la Foi_ formed at Lyons, and soon cast a beneficent eye upon North
and South America and the islands of Oceania. In 1814, soon after the
restoration of the Bourbons, the Abbé Coudrin had founded the Society
of Picpus “to promote the revival of the Roman Catholic religion in
France, and to propagate it by missions among unbelievers or pagans.”
This establishment received Papal sanction in 1817, and was placed
under “the special protection of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.” In
1833, the Congregation of the Propaganda, with the confirmation of the
Sovereign Pontiff, confided to the Society of Picpus the conversion of
all the islands of the Pacific ocean. Two apostolic prefectures were
established. M. E. Rouchouse was made bishop of Nilolopis, in partibus,
and apostolic vicar of Eastern Oceania; M. C. Liansu was appointed as
his prefect; two priests, Caret and Laval, and a catechist, Columban,
or Murphy, were placed under his direction. In May, 1834, the Catholic
missionaries arrived at Valparaiso, bound for the South Seas.
The benefits of the True Faith were not to advance into the Pacific
unassisted by the secular arm. Two officers of the French Navy,
Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz, in their _Considerations générales
sur la Colonisation Française dans l’Oceanie_ thus speak for the less
purely religious interests of France: “It is impossible for a traveller
who may visit the islands of the Pacific, not to speculate on the
destiny of the happy groups scattered over its bosom. The first thing
that strikes him is the sight of men, consecrated to a religious work,
meddling with the temporal affairs of these free people, whom they
have brought under their domination, under pretence of directing their
consciences.... When the rapid multiplication of the population of all
European countries is considered, it is evident that before long a
European colony will be formed in each of the innumerable islands of
the Pacific, and missionary efforts merit therefore all the attention
of the government.... On the signal from the first cannon that shall
be fired in Europe, a protecting flag will be seen to rise on each of
these islands now so peaceful. God grant that the tri-coloured flag of
our nation may show itself with honour!”
At this time, it was a law of Tahiti that before a foreigner could
have leave to reside on the island, permission must be granted by
Queen Pomare and the chiefs. The Catholic missionaries, aware of this
regulation, succeeded, however, in effecting a landing disguised as
carpenters, and to this island, partly idolatrous, partly heretic,
they gave the salutation of peace. Pomare, however, was unappreciative
of their salute, and refused to the disguised priests permission
to remain. This exclusion, in its sequel, raised the most delicate
questions of international diplomacy, and bestirred Pomare to
scatter anxious letters broadcast over the face of the earth. Her
correspondence included a cosmopolitan company of Commodores and
Admirals, Queen Victoria, the President of the United States, and
Louis Philippe of France. Admiral Du Petit-Thouars, in command of the
_Venus_, was despatched to Tahiti under special orders, “to make the
Queen and the inhabitants feel that France is a great and powerful
nation.” The _Venus_ arrived at Tahiti, August 27, 1838, and proceeded
to summary justice. Under the pressure of a broadside, Pomare was
obliged to beg pardon of the most Christian King. “I am only,” she
wrote to Louis Philippe, “the sovereign of a little insignificant
island; may glory and power be with your majesty; let your anger cease;
and pardon me the mistake that I have made.”
It was further demanded of Pomare that she pay “a great and powerful
nation” the sum of two thousand dollars as a more solid reparation for
her bad behaviour. Pomare was appalled at the magnitude of this sum:
there was no such amplitude of wealth in her treasury. The missionaries
were moved in compassion to finance her political indiscretion. But
in the next humiliation dealt out to her, the brethren were unable to
offer much assistance. The French Admiral bore instructions to require
that the French flag be hoisted the day following the receipt of the
two thousand dollars, and that it be honoured by Pomare with a salute
of twenty-one guns. The situation was awkward. Pomare was very short
of powder. She assured the Admiral she had not enough for more than
five shots. The Admiral paced the deck, and passed his fingers through
his hair in considerable agitation. “What will they say in France,”
said the patriotic commander, “when they know that I furnished the
powder to salute my own flag?” The difficulty was great. An expedient
was necessary, and the Admiral hit upon one: “Mr. Consul,” said he to
the Rev. Pritchard, and British Consul, “I can give you some powder,
and you can do with it as you please.” According to the French report,
Pritchard “himself loaded the bad cannon on the little island and
directed the firing;” and soon after, the French observed Pritchard
to look “thin and bilious, with an appearance of pride, and the cold
dignity so natural to the English.”
But the visiting Admiral had not yet completed his duty to “the
justly irritated King of the French.” He condescended to visit the
Queen on purpose to introduce Moerenhaut as French consul. Moerenhaut
had been American consul at Tahiti, but had been relieved of the
responsibilities of that office at a request of Pomare to the President
of the United States. Moerenhaut’s life, in all of its varied and
unsavoury details, has yet to be written: it would make an entertaining
supplement to the _Police Gazette_. Moerenhaut himself adventured in
letters, and in his _Voyages aux îles du Grand Ocean_ he exposes many
of the corrupt practices that he himself was instrumental in bringing
about. The Admiral and Moerenhaut, in the name of Louis Philippe, drew
up a convention with Pomare “to establish the right of French subjects
to stay in the territory of the Tahitian sovereign.”
During these proceedings, Captain Dumont D’Urville, cruising the
Pacific, arrived at the Marquesas with two corvettes, the _Astrolabe_
and the _Zélé_, hot from the Gambier islands, the seat of Bishop
Rouchouse. At Gambier, when “all were gay and cheerful,” D’Urville
had been enlightened as to the true character of the heretical
missionaries: “oppressors of the poor Tahitians; in short, vampires,
whose cruelties and inquisitorial tortures were as atrocious as their
hypocrisy was disgusting.” Before he left the jovial board, his
indignation was so high that “he felt the honour of his flag” required
that he sail to Tahiti and dispense “exemplary chastisement.” Upon his
arrival at the Marquesas he was surprised to find Du Petit-Thouars,
who had been there, already departed. There was value to his visit,
however, in giving to the pious efforts of Bishop Rouchouse the support
of a few broadsides. But there were other scenes at the Marquesas of
which Bishop Rouchouse, in good conscience, could not have approved.
Melville asserts that while the _Acushnet_ was at the Marquesas, “our
ship was wholly given up to every species of riot and debauchery.”
In the official account of the voyages of Captain Dumont D’Urville
is a more detailed account of a similar surrender. Melville says of
the dances of the women of the Marquesas: “There is an abandoned
voluptuousness in their character that I dare not attempt to describe.”
The French, in their official reports, exhibit a greater courage.
Captain Dumont D’Urville arrived in Tahiti nine days after the
submission of Pomare, and the day following his arrival he accompanied
Admiral Du Petit-Thouars on a visit to the Queen. He had not yet cooled
in his patriotic indignation, so he addressed Pomare severely, and with
gratifying results: “I perceived that Pomare was deeply affected, and
that tears began to fall from her eyes, as she threw them on me with
an evident expression of anger. At the same moment I also perceived
that Captain Du Petit-Thouars endeavoured to diminish the effect of my
words by some little liberties that he was taking with the Queen; such
as pulling gently her hair, and patting her cheeks; he even added that
she was foolish to be so much affected.”
When her French visitors sailed away, Pomare on November 8, 1838,
despatched a letter to her sister sovereign, Victoria, to implore “the
shelter of her wing, the defence of her lion, and the protection of her
flag.” The Tahitians expressed their sense of the favours being forced
upon them by the French by passing a law prohibiting “the propagation
of any religious doctrines, or the celebration of any religious
worship, opposed to that true gospel of old propagated in Tahiti by the
missionaries from Britain; that is, these forty years past.”
This breach of international courtesy brought Captain Laplace on the
_Artémise_ out to Tahiti “to obtain satisfaction from the Lutheran
evangelists who had forced themselves on a simple and docile people.”
As the _Artémise_ was off the coast, on April 22, 1839, she struck on
a coral reef: an accident that resulted in the officers and crew being
lodged on shore for two months. These two months must have given the
brethren bitter fruit for reflection upon the ease with which their
years of unselfish striving could be obliterated. According to the
account of Louis Reybaud of the _Artémise_: “From the first, the most
perfect harmony prevailed between the ship’s company and the natives.
Each of the latter chose his _tayo_,--that is, another self--among the
sailors. Between _tayos_ everything is common. At night, the _tayos_,
French and Tahitian, went together to the common hut. Every sailor has
thus a house, a wife, a complete domestic establishment. As jealousy is
a passion unknown to these islanders, it may be imagined what resources
and pleasures such an arrangement afforded our crew. The natives were
delighted with the character of our people; they had never met with
such gaiety, expansiveness, and kindness in any other foreigners. The
beach presented the aspect of a continual holiday, to the great scandal
of the missionaries. We have seen how the men managed, and what friends
they found. The officers were not less fortunate. The island that
Bougainville called the _New Cytherea_ does not belie its name. When
the evening set in, every tree along the coast shaded an impassioned
pair; and the waters of the river afforded an asylum to a swarm of
copper-coloured nymphs, who came to enjoy themselves with the young
midshipmen. Wherever you walked you might hear the _oui! oui! oui!_ the
word that all the women have learnt with marvellous facility. It would
have been far more difficult to teach them to say _non!_”
Among these relaxations, Captain Laplace found time publicly to declare
to the islanders “how shameful and even dangerous it was to violate
the faith of treaties, and how unjust and barbarous was intolerance.”
Before his sailing, Captain Laplace commanded Pomare to come aboard
the _Artémise_ to sign a treaty guaranteeing no discrimination against
the French. Pomare’s despondency at the beginning of the proceedings
was solaced by champagne and brandy. Casimir Henricy, who accompanied
the _Artémise_ throughout her circumnavigatory voyage, says: “When the
spirits of the party were sufficiently elevated to find everything
good, and while the hands were yet sufficiently steady not to let the
pen drop, the treaty was produced as the crowning act of the festivity.
M. Laplace thought he had gained a great victory over Polynesian
diplomacy; and, certainly, never was a political horizon more bright in
flowers and bottles.”
While Tahiti was the theatre of these religious and political cabals,
more important and decisive measures occupied the mighty minds of
Europe. The captains who had punished and conventionalised Pomare
and her people had made their reports in person to their sovereign
in Paris, and to the ministers of state, who had indicated their
instructions. Honours and titles were awarded to the successful
officers, and on their showing it was resolved that the Marquesas
should first be taken possession of, and then Tahiti. Rear-Admiral Du
Petit-Thouars was commissioned to execute the seizure. On board the
_Reine Blanche_, accompanied by three frigates and three corvettes,
he touched Fatu-Heva, the southernmost of the Marquesas, on April 26,
1842, and culminated his triumphant progress through the group in the
bay of Tyohee at Nukuheva on May 31.
The _Acushnet_ arrived at Nukuheva at a memorable time. “It was in the
summer of 1842 that we arrived at the islands,” says Melville; “the
French had then held possession of them for several weeks.”