NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY--GOLDEN LIZARDS--TAMENESS OF THE
BIRDS--MOSQUITOES--FLIES--DOGS--A SOLITARY CAT--THE CLIMATE--THE
COCOANUT TREE--SINGULAR MODES OF CLIMBING IT--AN AGILE YOUNG
CHIEF--FEARLESSNESS OF THE CHILDREN--TOO-TOO AND THE COCOANUT TREE--THE
BIRDS OF THE VALLEY
I think I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural history
of the valley.
Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came those dogs
that I saw in Typee? Dogs!--Big hairless rats rather; all with smooth,
shining speckled hides--fat sides, and very disagreeable faces. Whence
could they have come? That they were not the indigenous production of
the region, I am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of their
being interlopers, looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hide
themselves in some dark corner. It was plain enough they did not feel at
home in the vale--that they wished themselves well out of it, and back
to the ugly country from which they must have come.
Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked nothing
better than to have been the death of every one of them. In fact, on one
occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine crusade to Mehevi; but
the benevolent king would not consent to it. He heard me very patiently;
but when I had finished, shook his head, and told me in confidence that
they were ‘taboo’.
As for the animal that made the fortune of the ex-lord-mayor
Whittington, I shall never forget the day that I was lying in the house
about noon, everybody else being fast asleep; and happening to raise
my eyes, met those of a big black spectral cat, which sat erect in the
doorway, looking at me with its frightful goggling green orbs, like one
of those monstrous imps that torment some of Teniers’ saints! I am one
of those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, at
any time an insufferable annoyance.
Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected
apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When I had
a little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started up; the
cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house in pursuit;
but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever saw one in the
valley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It is just possible that
it might have escaped from one of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in vain
to seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of them
had seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me to
this day.
Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was none
which I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-hued
species of lizard. It measured perhaps five inches from head to tail,
and was most gracefully proportioned. Numbers of those creatures were
to be seen basking in the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses, and
multitudes at all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as they
ran frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up and
down the tall shafts of the cocoanut trees. But the remarkable beauty
of these little animals and their lively ways were not their only claims
upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible to fear.
Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady place
during the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with them.
If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair: when I
tried to frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would turn for
protection to the very hand that attacked it.
The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see one perched
upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced towards it, it did
not fly away immediately, but waited quietly looking at you, until you
could almost touch it, and then took wing slowly, less alarmed at your
presence, it would seem, than desirous of removing itself from your
path. Had salt been less scarce in the valley than it was, this was the
very place to have gone birding with it. I remember that once, on an
uninhabited island of the Gallipagos, a bird alighted on my outstretched
arm, while its mate chirped from an adjoining tree. Its tameness, far
from shocking me, as a similar occurrence did Selkirk, imparted to
me the most exquisite thrill of delight I ever experienced, and with
somewhat of the same pleasure did I afterwards behold the birds and
lizards of the valley show their confidence in the kindliness of man.
Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have entailed upon
some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introduction
among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers--the
Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society
group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ere
long to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz,
and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly
exasperating the natives materially obstruct the benevolent labours of
the missionaries.
From this grievous visitation, however the Typees are as yet wholly
exempt; but its place is unfortunately in some degree supplied by the
occasional presence of a minute species of fly, which, without stinging,
is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of the
birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidence
of this insect. He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to
roost there if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your
hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is
resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so
inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around
me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the open
apartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the sensation was
dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor creatures being
enveloped in inner darkness, must in their consternation have stumbled
over my palate, and been precipitated into the gulf beneath. At any
rate, though I afterwards charitably held my mouth open for at least
five minutes, with a view of affording egress to the stragglers, none of
them ever availed themselves of the opportunity.
There are no wild animals of any kind on the island unless it be decided
that the natives themselves are such. The mountains and the interior
present to the eye nothing but silent solitudes, unbroken by the roar
of beasts of prey, and enlivened by few tokens even of minute animated
existence. There are no venomous reptiles, and no snakes of any
description to be found in any of the valleys.
In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no topic of
conversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes. The rainy
season, it is true, brings frequent showers, but they are intermitting
and refreshing. When an islander bound on some expedition rises from his
couch in the morning, he is never solicitous to peep out and see how the
sky looks, or ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is always
sure of a ‘fine day’, and the promise of a few genial showers he hails
with pleasure. There is never any of that ‘remarkable weather’ on the
islands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America, and
still continues to call forth the wondering conversational exclamations
of its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of those eccentric
meteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of
Typee ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable by sudden
frosts, nor would picnic parties be deferred on account of inauspicious
snowstorms: for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summer
and sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical month of June just
melting into July.
It is this genial climate which causes the cocoanuts to flourish as they
do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil of the
Marquesas, and home aloft on a stately column more than a hundred feet
from the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible to the simple
natives. Indeed the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft, without a single
limb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presents
an obstacle only to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuity
of the islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would lead
them patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly parting
from their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This certainly would
be the case, were it not that the young fruit, encased in a soft green
husk, with the incipient meat adhering in a jelly-like pellicle to its
sides, and containing a bumper of the most delicious nectar, is what
they chiefly prize. They have at least twenty different terms to express
as many progressive stages in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject
the fruit altogether except at a particular period of its growth, which,
incredible as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain
within an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in their
tastes; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages, and
ingeniously tapping them, will first sip from one and then from another,
as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber experimenting glass in hand
among his dusty demi-johns of different vintages.
Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their comrades,
and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of walking up
the trunk of the cocoanut trees which to me seemed little less than
miraculous; and when looking at them in the act, I experienced that
curious perplexity a child feels when he beholds a fly moving feet
uppermost along a ceiling.
I will endeavour to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble young
chief, sometimes performed this feat for my peculiar gratification; but
his preliminary performances must also be recorded. Upon my signifying
my desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some particular
tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden attitude of
surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request.
Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on
his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will,
and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he
stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as though
endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. As
if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to the earth
despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair; and then,
starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his head, raises
both hands, like a school-boy about to catch a falling ball. After
continuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation that the fruit
was going to be tossed down to him by some good spirit in the tree-top,
he turns wildly round in another fit of despair, and scampers off to the
distance of thirty or forty yards. Here he remains awhile, eyeing the
tree, the very picture of misery; but the next moment, receiving, as it
were, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and clasping
both arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little above the other,
he presses the soles of his feet close together against the tree,
extending his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal, and his
body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over hand and foot over
foot, he rises from the earth with steady rapidity, and almost before
you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and embowered nest of nuts,
and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to the ground.
This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the trunk
declines considerably from the perpendicular. This, however, is almost
always the case; some of the perfectly straight shafts of the trees
leaning at an angle of thirty degrees.
The less active among the men, and many of the children of the valley
have another method of climbing. They take a broad and stout piece of
bark, and secure each end of it to their ankles, so that when the feet
thus confined are extended apart, a space of little more than twelve
inches is left between them. This contrivance greatly facilitates
the act of climbing. The band pressed against the tree, and closely
embracing it, yields a pretty firm support; while with the arms clasped
about the trunk, and at regular intervals sustaining the body, the feet
are drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and a corresponding elevation of
the hands immediately succeeds. In this way I have seen little children,
scarcely five years of age, fearlessly climbing the slender pole of
a young cocoanut tree, and while hanging perhaps fifty feet from the
ground, receiving the plaudits of their parents beneath, who clapped
their hands, and encouraged them to mount still higher.
What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions, would
the nervous mothers of America and England say to a similar display of
hardihood in any of their children? The Lacedemonian nation might have
approved of it, but most modern dames would have gone into hysterics at
the sight.
At the top of the cocoanut tree the numerous branches, radiating on
all sides from a common centre, form a sort of green and waving
basket, between the leaflets of which you just discern the nuts thickly
clustering together, and on the loftier trees looking no bigger from
the ground than bunches of grapes. I remember one adventurous little
fellow--Too-Too was the rascal’s name--who had built himself a sort of
aerial baby-house in the picturesque tuft of a tree adjoining Marheyo’s
habitation. He used to spend hours there,--rustling among the branches,
and shouting with delight every time the strong gusts of wind rushing
down from the mountain side, swayed to and fro the tall and flexible
column on which he was perched. Whenever I heard Too-Too’s musical voice
sounding strangely to the ear from so great a height, and beheld him
peeping down upon me from out his leafy covert, he always recalled to my
mind Dibdin’s lines--
‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To look out for the life of poor Jack.’
Birds--bright and beautiful birds--fly over the valley of Typee. You
see them perched aloft among the immovable boughs of the majestic
bread-fruit trees, or gently swaying on the elastic branches of the
Omoo; skimming over the palmetto thatching of the bamboo huts; passing
like spirits on the wing through the shadows of the grove, and sometimes
descending into the bosom of the valley in gleaming flights from the
mountains. Their plumage is purple and azure, crimson and white, black
and gold; with bills of every tint: bright bloody red, jet black, and
ivory white, and their eyes are bright and sparkling; they go sailing
through the air in starry throngs; but, alas! the spell of dumbness is
upon them all--there is not a single warbler in the valley!
I know not why it was, but the sight of these birds, generally the
ministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy. As in their
dumb beauty they hovered by me whilst I was walking, or looked down upon
me with steady curious eyes from out the foliage, I was almost inclined
to fancy that they knew they were gazing upon a stranger, and that they
commiserated his fate.