A HEALING TREE—PLANTATION LIFE—VANILLA CROPS—CAT-AND-DOG LIFE—A FOILED
ASSASSIN—THE TROPICS OF TO-DAY—ENGLAND IN DAYS OF YORE—AMONG THE
CRAGS—INFANTICIDE—HEATHEN DAYS.
_Chez_ MADAME BRUN, PAPETOAI,
_Monday Night_.
Another long day in scenes of dream-like loveliness. Early as I always
awaken, the little trio were astir before me, waiting in their
bathing-dresses to escort me to the shore, dancing joyously as sunbeams,
and most carefully pioneering my path through the shallow water, so as
to avoid the very unpleasant chance of treading on sea-hedgehogs and
other spiny creatures. There are so very few places in the isles where
sea-bathing is altogether free from danger of sharks, that it is a
luxury on which we rarely venture, and therefore appreciate it all the
more.
Immediately after early chocolate, a friendly gendarme lent me his horse
(I had brought my own saddle), and, not without some cowardly qualms, I
rode off alone in search of Madame Valles’s plantation. The road lay
along the shore—a lovely grass path, overshadowed by all manner of
beautiful trees, of which the most conspicuous is here called the
_tamanu_, an old acquaintance with a new name. In Fiji it is called
_ndelo_. It is common not only throughout Polynesia but also in the East
Indies, and in Mauritius.[63]
In all these lands this noble tree grows and flourishes, just above
high-water mark, on what seems to us the most arid sandy shores, and
outstretches its wide branches with their rich dark foliage, casting
cool delicious shadows on the dazzling coral-sands, a boon to tired
eyes, weary of the mid-day glare.
It is a tree for the healing of the nations. Its large glossy leaves,
when soaked in fresh water, are valuable in reducing inflammation of the
eyes; and its round green fruit contains a small grey ball, within which
lies a kernel, which yields about sixty per cent of a green-coloured
bitter oil, worth about £90 a ton in the Anglo-Indian market. It is an
invaluable remedy as a liniment in all forms of rheumatism, rheumatic
fever, bruises, stiffness, and similar ailments. Throughout the isles
its virtues are fully recognised, but it is only prepared in small
quantities for domestic use, and stored by prudent householders, in
hollow gourds, which are the correct substitute for bottles. The labour
of expressing the oil, by any hand process, is so great as to prevent an
extensive manufacture; and I am not aware that any machinery for this
purpose has found its way to the Pacific, though it does seem a pity
that so valuable a product should be wasted, as it now is.
Wherever we go, in any of these isles, the sea-beach is strewn with
myriads of these, and other seeds, some of which, such as the gigantic
climbing-bean,[64] have been washed down by the mountain streams; while
others, such as these grey balls, and the curious square-shaped seeds of
the Barringtonia, in their outer case of nature-woven fibre, drop from
the boughs which overhang the sea. The white blossom of the _tamanu_
trees is both fragrant and ornamental, and many a pleasant hour have I
spent on many a lovely isle, alone (save for the omnipresent army of
hermit-crabs) beneath the shade of these grand trees, beside the cool
blue waters of the Pacific.
I had no difficulty in finding Madame Valles’s home—a lovely nest,
perched high on the hillside, with a background of grey rock-pinnacles
and crags. The house is embowered in greenery, and from its verandahs
you look through a frame of pure scarlet hybiscus to the bluest of
lagoons, divided from the purply ocean beyond by the line of gleaming
white breakers which bound the coral-reef.
M. Valles is at present very unwell, and quite a prisoner, so double
work falls to the lot of Madame Valles, who has to do most of her own
cooking and house-work, milk her own cow, and attend with unwearied care
to that most precarious of all crops, vanilla. So you see that even in
Moorea plantation life is not luxurious.
The great difficulty here is to obtain labour; and there is not one
regular servant or labourer on this estate. Fifteen acres of coffee have
all run wild, and grown into tall straggling bushes, from total lack of
hands to tend it. As there is no one to gather the crop of ripe red
coffee cherries, they are left to drop, and the rats eat the soft fruit,
leaving the beans untouched; so the family collect these, all ready
pulped, and devoutly wish the rats were ten times as numerous.
But the most precious crop here is vanilla, which is both pretty and
lucrative, being worth about four dollars a pound. It is a luxuriant
creeper, and grows so freely that a branch broken off and falling on the
ground takes root of its own accord; and it climbs all over the tall
coffee shrubs, the palms, _avocat_ pear and orange trees, and everything
that comes in its way, growing best on living wood, the tendrils thence
deriving sustenance. It also flourishes best in unweeded grounds, the
roots being thereby kept cool.
So the steep wooded hillside is densely matted with this fragrant spice,
which scents the whole air,—indeed the atmosphere of the house is
redolent of vanilla. It is like living in a spice-box, as the pods are
laid to dry in every available corner. They must be gathered unripe, and
dried in a moist warm place; sometimes they are packed under layers of
quilts to prevent them from bursting, and so losing their fragrant
essence.
All this sounds very pleasant, and only suggests light work, yet in
truth this cultivation involves most exhausting toil. The plant is an
exotic; it lives in these isles by the will of the planter, not by
nature’s law. In its native home exquisite humming-birds hover over its
blossoms, therein darting their long bills in search of honey, and
drawing them forth, clogged with the golden pollen, which they carry to
the next flower, thus doing nature’s work of fertilisation.
Here the flowers have no such dainty wooers, and the vanilla bears no
fruit unless fertilised by human hand. So M. and Madame Valles, and
their son, divide the steep hillside into three sections, and each
morning they patiently but wearily toil up and down, up and down, again,
and again, and again, in order to manipulate each blossom that has
expanded during the night. “Faire le mariage des fleurs,” as Madame
Valles describes her daily task, is no sinecure; it must be done during
the hottest hours of the day, when any exertion is most exhausting. It
needs a keen eye to detect each fresh blossom, and any neglected flower
withers and drops. Each day the ripening pods must be gathered, and in
dry weather the plants require frequent watering—an indescribable toil.
This morning Madame Valles let me accompany her on her morning rounds,
whereby I realised that toil and hardship are to be found even in
paradise.
We returned to breakfast, which was served by an old French soldier—a
garrulous old fellow, and evidently quite a “character.” Apparently his
life is a burden to him, by reason of the multitude of half-tamed
animals which swarm about the place. In the dining-room were three old
and six young cats; two large, three medium, and many small dogs,—all
hungrily clamouring for food, and only kept off the table by the free
use of a large, resounding whip.
In the afternoon M. Brun came in search of me, and we rode to the head
of the bay, where there is a beautiful estate, and large comfortable
house, built many years ago by an English planter, who failed, and the
place was bought by Dr Michelli, an Italian, who chanced just then to be
conveying a cargo of Chinese coolies to Peru. So many died on the voyage
that he determined to halt at Tahiti, and give the survivors time to
recruit. Finding this very desirable property in the market, he
concluded that the part of wisdom was to go no further. So here he
settled with about fifty Chinamen, who work the land and give him a
third of the profits, while he rides about the mountains, and shoots
wild cattle for their common use.
His surroundings are somewhat polyglot. The cook is an Englishman;
servants of various degree are Tahitian; while the overseer, M.
Bellemare, is a French _externe-politique_, who was exiled for firing at
the late Emperor Louis Napoléon—a crime which the Emperor seems to have
punished on the Biblical principle of heaping coals of fire, in the form
of unmerited reward; for during his lifetime M. Bellemare received a
regular pension and lived on the fat of the land—a clemency which
certainly failed to awaken one thrill of gratitude in the would-be
assassin. The pension having expired with the death of the Emperor, M.
Bellemare has been obliged to seek remunerative occupation, which he has
here found.
_Tuesday, 11th._
Again a delightful sea-bathe, followed by real French chocolate, and
then the charming little trio constituted themselves my guides, and led
me by difficult, and to me undiscernible paths, over the wooded hills,
and through _la brousse_, which consists of dense guava scrub, to
various points, from which we obtained lovely views of the harbour. The
walk involved an amount of severe scrambling which, even to me, was
somewhat trying; but the children skipped along over rock and crag like
young kids, only pausing, with charmingly pretty manners, to see if I
required their aid, and bringing me all manner of treasures of fruit and
flowers.
I fear no description can possibly convey to your mind a true picture of
the lovely woods through which we wander just where fancy leads us,
knowing that no hurtful creature of any sort lurks among the mossy rocks
or in the rich undergrowth of ferns. Here and there we come on patches
of soft green turf, delightfully suggestive of rest, beneath the broad
shadow of some great tree with buttressed roots; but more often the
broken rays of sunlight gleam in ten thousand reflected lights, dancing
and glancing as they shimmer on glossy leaves of every form and
shade—from the huge silky leaves of the wild plantain or the giant arum,
to the waving palm-fronds, which are so rarely at rest, but flash and
gleam like polished swords as they bend and twist with every breath of
air.
It has just occurred to me that probably you have no very distinct idea
of the shape of a cocoa-palm leaf, which does not bear the slightest
resemblance to the palmettos in the greenhouse. It consists of a strong
mid-rib, about eight feet long, which, at the end next to the tree,
spreads out, very much as your two clenched fists, placed side by side,
do from your wrists. The other end tapers to a point. For a space of
about two feet the stalk is bare; then along the remaining six feet a
regiment of short swords, graduated from two feet to eighteen inches in
length, are set close together on each side of the mid-rib. Of course
the faintest stir of the leaf causes these multitudinous swordlets to
flash in the sunlight. Hence the continual effect of glittering light,
and also the extreme difficulty of securing a good photograph of a
cocoa-palm.
A little lower than these tall queens of the coral-isles, rise
fairy-like canopies of graceful tree-ferns, often festooned with most
delicate lianas; and there are places where not these only, but the
larger trees, are literally matted together by the dense growth of the
beautiful large-leaved white convolvulus, or the smaller lilac ipomæa,
which twines round the tall stems of the palms, and overspreads the
light fronds, like some green waterfall. Many of the larger trees are
clothed with parasitic ferns; huge bird’s-nest ferns grow in the forks
of the branches, as do various orchids, the dainty children of the mist,
so that the stems are wellnigh as green as everything else in that
wilderness of lovely forms. It is a very inanimate paradise, however. I
rarely see any birds or butterflies, only a few lizards and an
occasional dragon-fly; and the voice of singing-birds, such as gladden
our hearts in humble English woods, is here mute—so we have at least
this compensation, for the lack of all the wild luxuriance which here is
so fascinating.
I wonder if a time will ever come when these fairy isles shall have
passed through changes as marvellous as those which geologists teach us
to trace in Old England.
Have you ever fully realised that “once upon a time” all the strange
beautiful plants which we call tropical, were growing in rank luxuriance
on English soil? I believe that the curious diapered stem of the quaint
papawa is one of our common fossil forms. In Dr Buckland’s museum at
Oxford, I remember seeing unmistakable fruit of a screw-pine (pandanus)
found in the Oolite, near Charmouth. As to the London Clay, the Isle of
Sheppey seems wholly composed of relics of tropical plants, turtles,
serpents, and shells, now unknown save in these warm isles. I have seen
a drawing of the section of a fossil fruit found there, which might have
been made from a split bread-fruit; also nuts greatly resembling those
of the cocoa and areca palms. The custard-apple is found there, and the
dracæna and yucca, and many another tropical leaf and fruit. Would that
they grew there now!
Picture to yourself a time when the bleak Northumbrian coast was a
forest like one of these, and the coals, of which we now so gladly heap
up blazing fires, were all beautiful ferns and palms, waving in the warm
sunlight! Truly it is hard to realise. Even the dragon-flies and lizards
of those antediluvian forests are preserved, and spiders and scorpions.
As to the chalk and lias and limestone, they give us sponges and corals
and zoophytes enough to build up any number of coral-reefs; and there
are great turban echini with heavy spines, like those we find here, and
star-fish innumerable, and teeth and vertebræ of sharks and ray.
So that there really was a time when Old England must have been as
fascinating as any South Sea isle. What she may have been in the days of
the mammoth and megatherium, and all the gruesome race, restored for our
edification at the Crystal Palace, is quite another matter; the very
idea is suggestive of nightmare!
_Wednesday, 12th Dec._
This has been a grey stormy day, with heavy showers, but as Dr Michelli
had promised to escort me up the valley to the foot of the mighty crags,
I could not lose so good an opportunity; and indeed such solemn mountain
scenes only borrow fresh grandeur from the gloom, so that I almost
prefer a stormy leaden sky for such an expedition; besides, it is no
small gain to have a veiled sun, as its full rays, when refracted by the
black trap dikes, make the ascent somewhat of a toil.
The friendly gendarme again lent me his horse to ride to the head of the
harbour, where the Doctor had other steeds ready for the mountain.
Unfortunately he himself was unwell, and so was obliged to commit me to
the care of the _externe-politique_, who fulfilled his trust admirably,
though I confess that it gave me something of an eerie feeling to find
myself at a height of 2000 feet above my fellow-men, sitting quietly
sketching among black crags and floating mists, alone with a would-be
murderer, who, glorying in his shame, entertained me at great length
with a most animated description of the whole story, nor spared me one
of his poignant regrets at the failure of his vile attempt.
The scenery on every side was magnificent. Huge indigo-coloured
mountain-masses looming out awfully through the floating
cloud-wreaths—tremendous precipices—deep mysterious ravines—right above
me towered a gigantic square-shaped mountain, and beyond it one vast
pinnacle. You never can lose the impression of cyclopean fortifications
and watch-towers. The higher ridges are absolutely inaccessible; but
adventurous cragsmen sometimes find their way by tracks which wild goats
would shun—narrow ledges by which they can creep along the face of a
precipice, and so pass on to another ravine, or scramble from ledge to
ledge with the help of ropes. “Le jeu vaut-il la chandelle?” I should
say not.
From the highest point we reached, I obtained a grand view of the
valley, which lay bathed in sunlight, while we were shrouded in mountain
gloom, with a storm fast gathering overhead. Far below us, beyond the
orange-groves and the cultivated lands, lay the two harbours, Pao Pao
and Opunohu—two calm lagoons lying to right and left of a mighty
rock-pyramid, which is crowned with trap ridges, so narrow as here and
there to have altogether worn away, leaving arches and apertures through
which the sky is seen, as through the eye of a needle. This is a common
feature of the ridges which form the centre of this strange isle, and
which are thus pierced in many places—a phenomenon duly accounted for in
Tahitian legends by the spear-thrusts of certain demigods and heroes.
A few heavy rain-drops, with a prospect of abundance to follow,
compelled me to abandon this splendid sketching-ground, and return to
the lower world, where the Doctor awaited my return, to share an
excellent breakfast, with all the delicacies of Moorea. One of these,
which is perhaps unknown to you, is the Abercarder pear, or, as it is
called in India, “subaltern’s butter,” a pear-shaped fruit, the size of
a big man’s fist. Within its green rind lies the softest melting pulp,
really like vegetable butter, with a large round seed in the centre.
This fruit is either eaten with pepper and salt, or else beaten up with
lemon-juice and sugar; and it is excellent in either form. The chief
difficulty is to secure it, as all animals have a passion for it; cows,
horses, even dogs and cats, watch for the falling of the ripe fruit, and
quickly despatch it.
After breakfast I rode back here, and found my host and hostess just
starting for the village, so I strolled along with them to see the big
coral church, memorable as having been the first built in this group, a
monument of early zeal, and a wonderful triumph of will over
difficulties. But now, whether from diminished energy or decreased
population I know not, the place is falling into disrepair, and suggests
retrogression.
But the bird-cage homes of the people are charming, and the inmates are
charming, and the brown-eyed olive-coloured babies, and their most
careful little brothers and sisters, are especially attractive. To-day I
have seen the loveliest baby I have ever yet met with. Of Italian and
Tahitian parentage, it receives a double heritage of beauty, and the
little Aurora is destined hereafter to take her place among the fairest
maidens of Italy.
Certainly children here have a very happy time of it. What with
idolising parents, and friends who seem always ready to play with them,
their only danger lies on the side of excessive spoiling. And yet, in
heathen days, the Tahitians were as noted for infanticide as the
Sandwich Islanders,—with the one difference that here, the poor little
unwelcome guests were disposed of at the very moment of their birth, and
if spared for even a few minutes they were generally saved; whereas in
Hawaii, the system of child-murder was much more deliberate.
The extent to which it was practised in both groups makes one marvel how
the isles failed to be wholly depopulated. Though offspring were
generally numerous, few parents cared to rear more than three children;
a man with four was looked upon as a _taata taubuu buu_—that is, a man
with a heavy burden. The majority of Tahitian women in pagan days spoke
openly, and without the slightest shame, of having put to death
half-a-dozen helpless innocents, while some confessed to ten or twelve;
and when the missionaries and their wives implored these women to spare
their little ones, yet unborn, their words were heard with derision, and
the cruel mothers would return to boast how they had obeyed the custom
of the isles, in defiance of white men’s counsel.
Afterwards, when these same women had become Christians, they would come
to the school festivals, at which were sometimes gathered several
hundred happy children, whose lives had been spared in obedience to a
better law; and often, with bitter tears, did these childless mothers
bewail their own dead offspring, murdered by their own hands. At one
such meeting, a venerable chief arose to address the people, and show,
by contrast with the past, how great was their present gain. Pointing to
a troop of comely lads and lasses, he said: “Large was my family, but I
alone remain. I am the father of nineteen children; all of them I have
murdered: now my heart longs for them. Had I spared them, they would now
have been men and women, knowing the word of the true God. But all died
in the service of the false gods, and now my heart is repenting—is
weeping for them.”
One of the chief women, who, having learnt to read at the age of sixty,
had proved a most useful school teacher, was bitterly troubled in the
hour of death by the thought of her sixteen children, every one of whom
she had herself put to death. But there was scarcely a woman who had
attained middle age ere the spread of Christianity, who was not haunted
by the same sad memories; and one visitor to Tahiti has recorded his
amazement when, on his expressing his belief that statements had been
exaggerated, his friend appealed to three most respectable,
motherly-looking women, who chanced to be sitting in the room quietly
sewing, and quite at random, asked each in turn how many of her children
she had killed. With shame and evident pain, the first, with faltering
voice, replied, “I have destroyed nine;” the second said she had killed
five; the third had killed seven. So that these three women casually
selected, had killed twenty-one children!
It seems scarcely credible that such deeds were perpetrated by the same
race whom we now see so gentle and loving; but heathenism always tended
to cruelty.
In nothing was this more apparent than in the treatment of the sick.
Generally speaking, the best a sick man could hope for was simple
neglect. As soon as it was evident that his illness would be protracted,
a hut of cocoa-palm leaves was built for him at a little distance, and
he was carried there. For a while he was supplied with food and drink;
but his friends soon grew careless, and so often forgot him, that he
very probably died of starvation. Should he be possessed of property
coveted by his neighbours, he was very likely murdered with the most
wanton barbarity. His “friends” having determined on his death,
proceeded to his hut, armed with their spears; and, unheeding of his
cries for mercy, they treated him as a target, trying who could take
best aim, till at length some one, more merciful than the others, rushed
in and pierced him through the heart.
At other times the sick were buried alive. Their relations dug a pit,
and then, pretending that they would carry the sufferer to the river to
bathe, they threw him into the ready-made grave, and drowned his cries
by quickly throwing in stones and earth. Sometimes the victim perceived
what was in store for him, and endeavoured to escape; but he was
invariably captured by his murderers, and carried to his untimely grave.
Almost the first great change wrought by Christianity was in the care of
the sick, who now are nursed with the utmost tenderness, the natives
having, many years ago, formed themselves into societies for the express
purpose of building houses, where the aged and helpless, who have no
friends or children to tend them at home, may be fed and clothed, and
comforted by the ministrations of Christian teachers.
In one respect, the people of Tahiti, like those of Samoa, proved
superior to most other Pacific islanders. There is no evidence of their
having ever been cannibals. While their neighbours in the Paumotus and
the Marquesas, in the Hervey Isles and New Zealand, and in nearly every
group throughout the Western Pacific, never lost a chance of feasting on
human flesh, these gentler savages, like those of Samoa, do not seem to
have been tempted by the hideous fare. They contented themselves with
heaping insult on the bodies of the slain, which were often brutally
mutilated.
Nothing amazes me more than to hear travellers and others occasionally
talk with positive regret of the work of missionaries of all
denominations, throughout these various groups of isles. To hear them
speak, you would suppose that the natives, in their untutored state,
were the most innocent, loving, and attractive of mortals. Surely such
men can know nothing of the past, and of the dangers incurred by the
early teachers, to whose earnest labours in the beginning of the present
century those ungrateful talkers owe their own present safety. But even
in those days the worst dangers and the most virulent opposition
encountered by the missionaries were almost invariably stirred up by
iniquitous white men—generally sailors and shipmasters.[65]
Certainly the Tahitians, as we now see them, are as gentle and
affectionate as it is possible for a people to be. Most kind and
hospitable, always cheerful and good-natured, easily pleased and amused,
finding matter for mirth in every trifle; so that angry words or
recriminations are rarely heard, but rather a sound of rippling
laughter, which seems here to pervade the very air. A messenger is just
going across to Tahiti to take letters, and to fetch any that may have
arrived by the schooner from San Francisco. I shall send this as a
postscript to my last, which will probably reach you at the same
time.—So good-bye.
YOUR LOVING SISTER.