THE SAMOAN GROUP
The Manua Islands are only ninety miles from the island of Tutuila.
This latter island is sometimes called Pago-Pago, after the village
of Pago-Pago, which is on the southeast coast, and where the United
States coaling station is situated. Either name is correct.
We were all of one night in sailing from the Manuas to Tutuila, and
were calmed off the opening of Pago-Pago Bay for several hours in
the morning. Then I set the engines in motion, and for a couple of
hours we threaded up the narrow bay until it opened out into the
prettiest land-locked harbour I have ever seen. Mountains were on
every side. The village of Pago-Pago is set on the shores and up the
mountainsides, with Governor Moore's residence on the highest point
in the bay.
We sailed past the battleship _Annapolis_, the same ship that had
given us such a pleasant reception in Papeete, Tahiti, one month
before. We were expected, and the jackies and officers and the men
stationed ashore were on the decks and lined up on the beach. The
band, composed of Samoan (native) musicians, stood around the big
flag-pole on the beach and played national airs while the flag was
dipped in salute. It was a great day for us, and a great day for
the _Annapolis_, when the _Snark_ came in the bay. Just imagine
three hundred Americans away down here on a little island in the
centre of the South Seas, seeing no one from home for months and
months! Sometimes even a year goes by with no American visitors. The
_Snark_ had been expected for weeks, and the minute we were sighted
a boat-load of officers came aboard with invitations for everyone on
the yacht.
We had not dropped anchor when the officers came aboard, and so busy
were we, shaking hands with fellow-countrymen, that Captain Y----
forgot to give orders to drop the anchor until we were so close to
shore that it would have been dangerous to do so on account of the
coral reef. I had stopped the engines, and we were drifting in, when
the officers saw our danger, and then some half-dozen of the highest
officers on the battleship _Annapolis_ got out in their boat with a
line to our bow, and worked like coolies to keep us off the shore.
When I had gotten the engines to running, they guided us to a place
of safety.
These officers, who never got their hands dirty on their own ship,
finally, after the anchor had been dropped, went ashore to doctor
hands that were blistered; but they never lost one grain of respect
from their men, who were watching from ashore, unable to help
because of not having a boat handy.
The battleship _Annapolis_ is stationed here the year round. The two
hundred men who compose her crew live ashore in their own homes,
while about one hundred men in command of the shore station have
wives and families and nice little bungalows. Many of the sailors
have Samoan wives, and many of them live what is known as
_Fas-Samoan_, which means residing in grass houses and sleeping on
grass mats thrown on the ground, and eating native foods. So far as
I could see, they are the happiest lot of men in the world. Of
course, life must have been very monotonous at first, but after they
once got settled they formed a more contented colony than any
persons of the same number in America. They have their clubs and
baseball diamond; all the literature they care for they get every
six weeks; they give balls and parties, and, as they are sure of
their jobs, have nothing to worry over.
And it is certainly a pretty sight they make in their pure white
uniforms. The Samoans that form the national guard are all dressed
alike, in blue _lava-lavas_ and white singlets. About one dozen of
the chief officers have fine mansions. Governor Moore's is the
finest of them all, and sits high above the rest. One officer owns
an automobile, and many have motor-boats.
We lay in Pago-Pago Harbor one week. During this time we were living
ashore with friends, that is, all but Tehei, who, not speaking
English nor Samoan, preferred to remain aboard. We had been in the
bay a couple of days when a big six-foot-one native came on board,
and in excellent English said he was a Tahitian and that he had
heard we had a Tahitian with us. We called Tehei. The big man went
up and spoke to Tehei in his own tongue; and Tehei was overjoyed to
find someone he could talk to. The big Tahitian's name was Henry--a
native of Rapa Island. He was then captain of a small trading
schooner that plied in the Samoan group. He and Tehei became close
friends, and on the day that we prepared to leave, Henry struck Jack
for a job. As Henry was acquainted with the islands that we intended
to visit next, Jack decided to hire him. Ernest, the French sailor,
was discharged. Ernest had proved a disappointment, so we did not
regret the change. Jack bought him a ticket for Auckland, New
Zealand (for no one can remain in Samoa without one hundred and
fifty dollars in his pocket), and he left on the steamer _Nuvina_.
Henry, however, was a very good sailor, having spent twelve years in
the South Seas and in Europe in the French navy. He spoke French,
English, German, and all the principal South Sea languages. Weighing
nearly two hundred pounds, and six feet one inch in height, he was a
mountain of muscle; and he knew more about every part of the ship
than any person I have ever seen.
Henry's ship was turned over to a Samoan captain, and amid the
cheers of three hundred Americans and a salute from the big guns on
the _Annapolis_, we shoved out of the harbour under Henry's
steerage. He kept the wheel all night, and early next morning we
dropped anchor in the harbour of the largest city in Polynesia:
Apia, Samoa. Several small schooners and a steamer were anchored
close to us; and ahead, the white coral city that has been wrecked
by revolutions and hurricanes a dozen times, until it now resembles
an old European city with decayed castles. Between us, on the beach,
lay the old hull of a German warship that had been wrecked here
during a hurricane in 1889. The Germans had tried to dynamite it to
pieces, but when they had broken nearly all the windows in the town
and the old hull refused to budge, they decided to let it lie until
it rusted away. But for twenty years it had defied rust and shown no
sign of leaving its resting-place, and I don't believe the residents
would allow it to be removed now, for it would not seem like Apia
Harbor without that old hulk.
Apia has a population of about five thousand. About four hundred are
Germans and Australians, and the rest are alien South Sea Islanders
and native Samoans. Here the Germans have pursued the same policy as
in all their larger possessions. They maintain a warship and a
company of German soldiers on duty all the time. Their police system
is entirely of natives, and they have a large standing army of
native soldiers.
The city is built for about three miles around the bay. Most of the
buildings are of white coral cement, showing up like white marble
from the sea. Back from the sea are the native grass houses; in
fact, a native of any of the South Sea islands will never live in
any other than a grass house, from choice. He may live in a white
man's house if he is a chief of royal blood, but he will usually
have a grass house in connection, to go to when he can no longer
stand the coral one.
[Illustration: TYPES OF SOLOMON ISLANDERS: ONLY ONE DEGREE REMOVED
FROM AN ANIMAL]
Apia is a half-way station for steamers bound to and from Australia
and America. Several steamers from New Zealand pay monthly visits to
obtain copra. These steamers usually stay in the harbour for several
days; and as the ships cannot draw up to the wharves, they must lie
out nearly a mile while the copra is loaded from barges. The natives
with boats do a profitable business carrying people to and from
ships; and they hire out as guides and take the tourists to Robert
Louis Stevenson's old home, and through the largest cocoanut
plantation in the world. And when a steamer is seen to drop anchor,
the professional entertainers give a big dance. The hat is passed
around, and the natives always make a good sum of money.
Apia, Papeete, and Suva, Fiji, are practically the only places in
Polynesia where money has a value among the natives. At Apia, the
natives know its value so well that they devise every scheme to
obtain it, and have developed their money-getting qualities as
perfectly as Americans. The best scheme is their semi-annual boat
races. Twice a year natives come from all over the islands and enter
their boats; betting stands spring up on the beach, and every native
who can dig up money will stake all he has on his favourite boat.
At such regattas, there are usually excursion steamers from
Australia and New Zealand.
Apia is a port of the most famous missionary steamer in the world,
the _Southern Cross_. The steamer fits out every three months at
Auckland and goes among the dark and little-known New Hebrides and
Solomon Islands. Then she returns and puts such converts as she has
found in a missionary school--later to be turned out as full-fledged
missionaries and taken back to their homes, there either to
backslide into a worse state of cannibalism than that of their
fellows, or else to preach the word of God. When a savage from the
Solomons does backslide, he is usually the most cannibalistic of his
tribe.
Apia, Samoa, was the only real home that Robert Louis Stevenson ever
knew. While a young man in Scotland, he was very seldom at home. He
made walking trips over England and France, and came to America in
the hold of an emigrant ship. After trying to settle down in
California, he finally gave it up, and with his wife and her son,
Lloyd Osbourne, he chartered the sailing-yacht _Casco_ and spent
several years cruising in the South Seas, at last settling down in
Apia. About four miles back of the city he built his home on the
side of a mountain, where he could command a view of the city and
the surrounding bay. This home he named Vailima. Here, with his
wife, and Lloyd Osbourne, his secretary, he lived the last years of
his life. It was here that he wrote several volumes of South Sea
stories.
Stevenson lost no time in making friends with the natives: it was
the delight of his life to entertain them at his home. He would take
part in their sports; and one chief, who had taken a fancy to him,
lived at Vailima, and at certain hours every day he taught Stevenson
the Samoan language, while Stevenson taught the chief English. At
the top of the mountain, Stevenson built a little pagoda, where he
went nearly every day to write. A narrow path had been cut up to the
summit through jungles of bananas and guavas, and he would toil for
hours in reaching the top. The natives had so much confidence in him
that all their troubles and differences were brought to him for
settlement. Except in the mornings, which he spent in writing, his
time was entirely taken up with the Samoans.
Those who have read many of his works will notice that his
characters are almost all big, strong, healthy people--just the
opposite of Stevenson, who was always a thin, sickly man. In fact,
people who knew him say that he had no use at all for a puny person.
The last year of his life was practically spent in bed, where he
wrote his best stories. Along toward the end, the natives would
gather in a body and stand around the house in silence, awaiting
news of his illness. The last few days there were hundreds and
hundreds of natives outside the house, awaiting the end, and when
it came, early one morning in 1894, the natives set up the death
chant, which spread along their lines until the whole island was
wailing at once. Work suspended throughout the island until after
the funeral.
Stevenson had requested that he be buried at the summit of the
mountain. His coffin was carried by chiefs, while other natives with
big knives blazed a road ahead for the procession, through the
jungles and to the top.
Of course, the _Snark's_ crew made a visit to Vailima, and then on
up to the top, to the grave--nearly ten miles of toil.
At Apia, the German government boasts of the best outfitted
observatory in Oceania. Here are all the latest astronomical
instruments in charge of ten expert astronomers. It is a splendid
set of instruments they have, but--as a native remarked--what is the
use of them in Samoa, where there are no cable connections, and
should the astronomers see a comet coming toward the earth, they
would be so long in letting the greater portion of the people know
that there would be no time to dodge!
Apia was the scene of slavery for many years. The schooners would
leave here and go among the Solomons and Fiji Islands and steal the
natives--_blackbird_ them, as they call it. The natives were then
brought to Apia and sold to planters and slave traders, until the
German government put a stop to this illegal traffic; but even now,
about five hundred blacks a year are brought into these islands, and
while the dealers can always give a satisfactory recruiting paper
for each native, it is doubtful if the natives ever knew what kind
of papers they were signing.
It was in Apia that we learned an interesting piece of Tehei's
history. One day while I was walking down the beach road in company
with him, a white woman stepped up, and throwing her arms around
him, nearly smothered him with her embraces. I thought she was
insane, until she started talking with him in his native tongue; and
then, turning to me, she told me that Tehei was once sailing in a
pearl-lugger among the Taumotu Islands, in a boat captained and
owned by her brother. A hurricane had surprised the small crew, and
the boat was blown to pieces. The crew was drowned--all but Tehei,
who, clinging to a hatch-cover, was washed ashore on one of the
reefs where pearlers were at work, and a few months later returned
to his home in an open boat that he had worked for while on the
reef. He made his way nearly four hundred miles in this open boat,
with only a luggersail for power. Tehei had never told of this
adventure, but we afterward heard several remarkable exploits of his
among the pearling islands.
Apia is full of interesting characters--old beach-combers and
retired black-birders, captains and runaway sailors, and
ticket-of-leave men from Australia. I know of one man, one of the
greatest business men in the town, who is an escaped convict from
the French penal settlement in New Caledonia.
The climate here is perfect. With a big wide sandy beach running for
miles round the bay, Apia would be an ideal pleasure resort if the
steamship connections were better, and if it were nearer to
civilisation.
The entire crew of the _Snark_ lived ashore while in Apia, although
each one took turn-about staying on board at night. Everything
possible was done to make our stay pleasant. Charley Roberts, a
race-horse owner, who was ruled off the turf, first in England, then
in America, then in Australia, and finally in New Zealand, had come
to Apia that he might race horses undisturbed. He had two
thoroughbreds shipped from New Zealand; and two aged horses were
matched against Charley's thoroughbreds every few weeks; bills were
gotten out telling of the big meet, and then the four horses would
pull off race after race, always with the same result. Roberts' mind
was wholly centred on this sport while we were there. Horses were
his one passion. And as he had means, his relatives in Australia
were content to have him race horses in Samoa. He got up a special
race for us; in fact, he is always glad to have a meet. Anyone going
to Apia should have Charley call a meeting of the Apia Turf
Association--it would be heartily enjoyed all around.
After two weeks in Apia, we slowly sailed out of the harbour late
in the afternoon. Charley Roberts and some friends went out with us
as far as they dared, and loaded us down with wines, and, most
important of all, eggs.
It was just sundown on one of the most perfect of South Sea
evenings that we cleared the island of Upolu and headed for the
island of Savaii, only twenty-five miles away. As it became
darker, the sky ahead grew red, and as we approached the island we
could clearly see tongues of fire issuing from the mouth of the
big crater, and gradually small threads of fire running down the
mountainside--threads that grew into glowing torrents as we came
closer, until by midnight we were sailing up the coast of an island
that seemed to be literally aflame. The crater of the volcano is
twenty-five miles inland, and about ten thousand feet high, the
land sloping gradually down to the sea, where it ends in an abrupt
precipice, one hundred feet high. For miles and miles, red-hot
sputtering lava rolled into the sea, sending up clouds of vapour.
Two miles from the seashore, we could read print plainly. As we
were getting into the lee of the land, where the wind was likely to
drop any minute, Jack told me to start the engines; then we slid
along the shore, edging in as far as possible. The air got hot and
sultry, and steam was rising from the water all about us. Jack
stationed the cook in the bow with a thermometer, and every few
minutes he would cry the temperature, until the water was nearly
at boiling-point; then we were afraid to go in farther on account
of the thousand gallons of gasolene aboard.
Henry, our new Kanaka sailor, knew this coast well, and was to take
us to a certain village where he was known, but at nearly two
o'clock in the morning we were still skirting the rivers of lava,
and the village was not in sight. By the light of the boiling lava
we could see ruined villages and hundreds of thousands of naked
cocoanut trees, stripped of their foliage and standing straight and
threadbare in the fiery glow, like trimmed poles. Henry finally
managed to distinguish the village he was taking us to, but it was
dead and deserted. The lava was all-destructive. We could get no
closer than a mile to the shore, and then steamed on up the coast,
hoping to find some place that had not been seared by the fires. We
would get nearly to the shore, only to see a reeking stream of lava,
further back and creeping down to the sea. Then on we would go
again. Everyone else in the boat was awestruck by such wholesale
destruction; they were leaning over the rail in wonder, without any
idea of the possibility of the engine's stopping, but my heart was
in my mouth all the time, for the wind had dropped, and had the
engines ever stopped, it would have been all up with us--nothing
could have kept us away from those cascades of lava. But luck was
certainly with us. The engine ran smoothly, and as the first streaks
of day lighted the east, we sighted a village that was unharmed and
showing signs of human occupation. Henry pronounced this place to be
Matautu, and we decided to anchor. After things were safely stowed,
everyone went to sleep on deck, after a hard night's work.
It was late in the afternoon before anyone awoke. As we felt like
going ashore after our rest, Jack and Mrs. London and myself set out
in the launch. We came to a deserted beach. There were no natives in
sight, although we could hear the hum of voices back in the village.
As the beach ran out so far in a gradual slope, we were forced to
anchor the launch out several hundred yards, and wade ashore. We
walked up the beach to the village, whence we had heard the voices,
and found several hundred natives before a small church, all praying
that the lava would not come down and destroy their village. Two
young girls in the centre of the group were dressed in gala array of
feathers and tapa cloths of gay colours, and each was carrying an
ornamental club. They simply stood in the centre, taking no part in
the ceremonies. They were the first to see us, and quietly motioning
to the assembly, spoke a few words. The crowd dispersed, all going
away talking in quiet tones, but even if we could not understand, it
was easy to guess that they were still supplicating for the eruption
to cease; and their quiet manner left no doubt that they had supreme
confidence in the potency of prayer.
The two girls who had first sighted us were called, in the Samoan
language, _taupou_ girls. Each village in Samoa has its _taupou_
girl, only one to the village, who upholds the honour of that
village, entertains the guests, and otherwise makes herself
agreeable. She controls the feasts and functions, and in fact has
more power than anyone, excepting the chief. As she is really the
most virtuous woman in the village, she is made the highest
dignitary at all religious gatherings, although taking no part in
them.
All the villages for twenty miles up the coast had been destroyed
and the people had fled to Matautu. There were about twenty _taupou_
girls gathered here. As Jack said, they looked like girls out of a
job, for when they leave their own village, they lose power.
Certainly they had not shown much power in letting the lava destroy
their homes. Only the Matautu _taupou_ girls seemed to be still in
favour. These girls attached themselves to Mrs. London and showed us
over the village. But such a woe-begone village! On all sides the
red-hot lava was creeping down, though they had managed to divert
the flow by building stone walls; but they knew that unless the
volcano twenty-five miles away quieted down, their homes were
doomed. It was dark when we prepared to go back to the _Snark_. We
were stopped just as we got to the launch by a white man, calling to
us on the beach. We went back and found a big, jolly Irishman,
waiting for us in company with a tall German.
[Illustration: AT OTIVI VILLAGE, SANTA CRUZ GROUP]
The Irishman was Dick Williams, the governor of the island, and
the German was the agent of an Apia trading concern. We went back
with the governor to his house, and learned that he had been away
all day helping the volcano sufferers. He invited us to stay ashore
all night, promising to show us a better view of the eruption the
next day. So, after a crowd of Kanakas had carried the launch up on
the beach, we went to nicely furnished grass houses that the
governor owned, and next morning, after a bath on the beach, we
started for the lava flows with the two white men as guides. We
walked miles between two flows of lava--hot lava that scorched our
hair. At one place, we passed the frame of a grass house set between
the walls of an old church. The owner had thought that on account of
its being near a church of God it would not be ruined, and his goods
would be safe. We walked over beds of lava that had cooled for
several days and that, encrusted, would bear our weight; but we knew
what lay beneath, for here and there, where there were fissures in
the cooled crust, spits of steam and bubbling jets of lava flowed
outward into the air. At one place, we found a remarkable thing--a
small churchyard that had been unmolested by the flow. It looked as
if the stream had parted and gone around the graveyard and joined
into one stream after the place had been passed. We went on farther
to a fresh lava stream that had just broken out. Close by was a
large frame house, the home of the former governor of Savaii, now
deserted. Here a mass of lava, about three feet in thickness and
several hundred yards wide, was slowly coming toward the house; red
and glowing, it was advancing about an inch a minute. With long
sticks we gathered the lava and pressed coins into it, to keep for
souvenirs. As we returned by way of the church graveyard, we stood
in the plot marvelling at such a miracle--that the molten
destruction had parted at this burial place!--and we ceased to look
upon the Kanaka who had built his house inside the churchyard as a
joke: he had sufficient reason, after seeing the graveyard saved, to
believe that his own home would be preserved.
As we came to the edge of the village, we skirted a fresh flow of
lava, creeping up on a church. Inside the place were crowds of
natives, all praying at once that the church be saved. They were
coughing and wiping their eyes from the effects of the sulphur fumes
that were enveloping them. We stood and watched this sad sight. Soon
the people filed out, slowly, forlornly, and we stood by to see the
end. In half an hour the first of the lava struck the building, and
soon was running in the doors, setting fire to everything
inflammable. Next morning when I looked for the church I found only
a mass of ruins.
We lived ashore five days, and on the last day I rode nearly
twenty-five miles, trying to reach the leeward side of the crater,
but the barefoot native guide turned back after it grew too hot for
his unprotected flesh, and I got only to within half a mile of the
crater, but near enough to see the awful yawning hole, nearly a
mile across, emitting thousands and thousands of tons of liquid
death every minute. I sat on the charred log of a cocoanut tree and
wondered where it all came from. Certainly, wherever it was formed,
there was no dearth of material. I afterward saw many volcanoes, but
none of them had the impressive magnificence of this.
We left the harbour in the afternoon of the fifth day; our two
_taupou_-girl friends came aboard to say good-bye, and as we looked
over to their village and asked them to tell good-bye to our friends
ashore whom we had not been able to see, they turned their eyes
shoreward and burst into tears, for already a narrow stream of lava
had broken through their village, and it would be only a matter of a
few days when they would be living in another village, shorn of
power, and their own pretty homes would be in ashes under the lava.
So it was that we up-anchored and set out for the Fijis, where we
were to lose our last and final captain.