over the night’s experience that we gave up searching for old idols and
left the inland solitudes and went back to the bay and, knocking about
for a week or so, finally sailed for Numea, where Joyce spent days among
the “libres” (time-expired convicts). He also took me into the prisons,
where we saw the most wretched men and women in existence, suffering
transportation for life, the map of despair seared on their faces as
they gazed through the bars of their small whitewashed cells as Joyce
and I were taken down the hushed corridors of the gaol wherein men were
incarcerated and brooded till they died. We also saw the guillotine
whereon the refractory convicts often met their end and man’s inhumanity
to man finished in sudden deep sleep.
I do not know what Numea is like now, but it was a kind of mortal hell
in those days, and I was sorry that Joyce had taken me there as I lost a
good deal of respect for human beings and all my faith in a fatherly
overwatching Providence. Joyce for a while gloated over all that he saw
and heard, but in a week he too sickened of Numea and ended the trip by
taking a passage and paying mine also to Suva. There was a schooner just
about to leave, so off we went, and after staying at Suva for a
fortnight proceeded by another boat to Tonga and finally went across to
Apia, where Joyce intended shipping for Sydney.
Once more I fell in with traders, and stayed at and around Samoa for
another three months, during which time I went off roving and stumbled
across the village where lived King Mataafa. I was introduced to him by
one of the chiefs, a fine-looking Samoan of six feet, who turned out a
good friend to me. Mataafa honoured me with his friendship, and I gave
him great pleasure by my violin playing as I sat on a mat in the royal
native house, and he sat in front of me drinking “kava,” while his
retinue, following the laws of Samoan etiquette, imitated the royal
gestures. I stayed in the village for several days and I saw the chiefs
and other Samoan royalty go through many weird court dances, dressed up
in picturesque fashion, robed in stitched palm leaves, flowers and
tappu-cloth lava-lavas. At all those functions I played the violin, and
indeed I was the court musician and conductor of the primitive orchestra
of South Sea bone-clappers, with instruments of jingling shells and
weird bamboo flutes and barbarian war-drums. All these were played,
screamed and banged at full speed as I too fired away on my violin,
doing my best to keep the _tempo_ going, as the dancers did high-step
kicks and flings that would have sent any European to the hospital with
dislocated joints, but which did not even make those strange dancers
perspire, with such ease and elegance did they perform the original
dances of those climes. One old native woman with a big red blossom in
her dark shaggy hair kept bowing to the ground and with pride revealed
the tattooed descriptions of fighting warriors brandishing war-clubs,
and other strange inscriptions which were deeply engraved from her
shoulders to the lower part of her broad bare back!
I became acquainted at that feast with a young Island princess, the
daughter of one of the Samoan or Tonga kings, I really forget which. She
was very beautiful, and was one of the dance leaders, and as I watched
her dance, attired in a robe of flowers, and broad tasselled ridi, she
gave me many interesting glances and I must admit that I was extremely
flattered and swiftly returned the compliment. When all was over I got
Pomby, my friendly chief, to lead me to her and we gazed into each
other’s eyes with interest and embarrassment as we met, and that night
by moonlight I had the pleasure of escorting her across the mangrove
swamps which lay across the track. I often saw her during my stay. She
was the most English-looking South Sea Island girl I ever saw and had a
voice like a musical bird and eyes that breathed the tender light of
poetry, and I have often wondered what became of that beautiful princess
of the Samoan Isles.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXI
Little Damien’s Grave in the Forest—I go peddling in the South Seas—The
Art of Tattooing—About Apia and Samoan Life
I MET Raeltoa in Apia one afternoon. He caught hold of my hand and
kissed it, and was full of grief, for poor little Damien, his daughter,
was dead. I felt terribly cut up at hearing about it. She had caught
influenza. Poor Raeltoa, I did my best to soothe him, and at his intense
wish went out with him to the little grave. It was a terribly lonely
pathetic spot—a tiny mound under a small coco-palm; the flowers were
dying over my little dead friend, and Raeltoa and I stood there side by
side and both felt very unhappy. I stayed with Raeltoa that night, and
the next night, but did not sleep, for on the wall just by my bed hung
the toy fiddle I had made and the bow. The strings were broken and the
little warm hands that had held it lay in the grave. We were a sad
family, Raeltoa, his wife, the children and I, and when I bade them
good-bye they had tears in their eyes, and I also felt sad.
After bidding Raeltoa good-bye I found myself once more on my
“beam-ends” and was extremely pleased to fall in with a young trader who
hired me for canvassing purposes. He had purchased a quantity of
trinkets and gaudy underclothing with the intention of travelling inland
to the native villages, and so for some time I was employed in bartering
with the Samoan men and youths. I often watched their delight as they
attired themselves, as soon as they had purchased our goods, in old
shirts of various shades. The dusky maidens danced and whirled with
hysterical pleasure as they pulled on the yellow stockings or stood
smiling in white shoes, on their arms tin bracelets sparkling with
jewels made of coloured glass, while my friend the Cockney trader
perspired with delight over his bargains, and the sights that we saw.
“Gaud lummy ducks!” and “Ain’t this all right?” he would say as we
watched the different youths and maidens doing double shuffles and
turning head over heels as we dressed them up. Then we passed on under
the tropic palms and mangroves to the forest track that led to the next
village.
After I gave up peddling in the South Seas I became acquainted with a
young apprentice who had left a ship at Apia, and he and I went off
miles away to Tutuela and camped by Pangopango harbour and on the shore
side we built a little hut and lived Robinson Crusoe lives. My comrade
was a most cheerful companion and came from ’Frisco. We had fine times
in that hut under the coco-nut trees, and lived mostly by fishing; the
ports and lagoons below were crammed with small and big fish. We had an
old catamaran and sailed around dressed in shirt and pants only, and we
got so sunburnt that we were very nearly as brown as the natives. I
could almost write a book about those times, so varied and delightful
they were. Arthur Pink, for that was my comrade’s name, got a berth on
the American steamer and went back to ’Frisco. He was a manly fellow, a
staunch friend, and I was grieved to lose him. Before he went he got in
with a Samoan tatau (tattooer) and had the history of Samoa tattooed on
his back and legs, chiefs, women, birds and flowers, etc.; he tried to
persuade me to get tattooed but I declined. Tattooing is a great art in
the South Seas and the natives go through a deal of pain during the
operations. Some of the flesh engravings are exceedingly well done; they
perform the operation with an instrument something like a small tooth
comb made of bone. The women try to outrival each other in the beauty of
the tattooing which is mostly done on the lower part of the back and the
thighs and hips, wonderful schemes of tattoo art.
[Illustration: NATIVE HOMESTEAD]
Before closing this chapter I will give a few details about the Samoan
and South Sea groups and the people thereon. The chief Isles of Samoa
are Upolu, Savaii, Tutuela and Manua. They are all of volcanic origin,
are surrounded by coral reefs and palm-shaded lagoons; from the shore
side to the mountain slopes inland grow the dark coco-palms, the
beautiful bread-fruit trees, mangroves, plantains and other wild
tropical bush and fern-trees, wherein sparkle and flit gorgeous-coloured
butterflies, green parrots and cooing droves of Samoan doves. In the
shades of the forest and thick scrubby vegetation grow scented flowers
and over the forest paths as you pass along in the cool evenings the
winds from seaward, hovering in the thickets steal out in whiffs to your
nostrils, whiffs that smell like honey mixed with the ripe breath of
decaying bush flowers; on the slopes grows the beautiful hibiscus.
The mountain peaks, just inland, rise to the height of four thousand and
five thousand feet. Dotted with forest they stand in rugged grandeur
against the sky, and when the trade winds are blowing thick clouds come
sweeping in from seaward, smash against the peaks on their swift flight,
twisting and curling into a thousand magical shapes that fade away like
monstrous herds of phantom elephants and distorted mammoth things as
moonlight steals over the flying mist. Some of the mountains have
enormous craters wherein grow baby forests, haunted by singing birds. In
the gullies far below and miles beyond are native villages, homesteads
that look like sheds, open all round so that the wind blows through and
keeps them cool. From the forest up there you can see the heaving
Pacific Ocean twinkling in the moonlight.
Apia is the capital of Upolu and has a very mixed population. The white
buildings are mostly stores kept by Germans; nearly all the large
buildings are missionary halls and churches, German, American and
English chapels, wherein they teach the natives hypocrisy and the misery
of hell, and they are such adept pupils that they soon outrival their
teachers in the great art of artfulness. A good many of the Samoans can
read and write English much better than the poorer class of England can.
No Samoan would eat or even smell the food that the middle classes of
England live on.
The main trade of Samoa is in copra. Copra is dried coco-nut and is
exported to Australia and elsewhere. It is picked and cured and packed
by the natives under the supervision of the whites, Germans and
Americans, who get good profits and often make a fortune. It has never
been known or recorded in any book that a Samoan ever made a fortune,
which seems remarkable when we consider that it is his own country.
There was a Samoan chief in the old days who endeavoured to make money
out of his copra plantation, and bought up a lot of territory for
coco-nut growing, but the missionaries, acting for the traders,
frightened him out of his life, told him he would go to hell for putting
his heathen mind into mundane things, and for his sins they fined him
heavily and pinched all his copra plantation. He turned out to be a good
chief and went into the building line and built many fine houses for the
missionaries wherein were many rooms and great comforts. For this work
he was given one tin of condensed milk a week and at the completion of
the contract a paper-covered hymnbook.
The Samoans, Tongans and Tahitians are a handsome race, the men standing
nearly six feet; they are well built and of a sunburnt colour, have dark
bright eyes, thick curly hair which they dye to a golden hue, their
temperament is cheerful, and they are always singing. The women are very
good-looking, with roundish faces and full lips; their noses are
inclined to get flat as they get old; they have earnest kind-looking
eyes, well-shaped bodies and good limbs whereon the tattoo of ancient
pictorial Samoa is beautifully engraved so as to show off the curves of
the back and thighs and give them an antique appearance. In fact when
they stand quite still under the coco-palms you could almost imagine
they were beautifully finished statues if it were not for the flies
buzzing round their eyes making them blink.
The native children are wistful, plump little mites; much prettier than
European infants and very intelligent. They can swim at three months
old; talk, run and sing at a year old, and if a Samoan had a child that
sucked a dummy at six years old and wailed drivelling along in its pram
at an advanced age, as the children of the wealthy class of England do,
they would look upon it as a great curio and smother it for shame on the
first starless night.
They are a clean race, and, except for the odour of the scented coco-nut
oil which they polish their velvet skins with, do not smell of
perspiration as the clothed white do in hot weather. A Samoan could not
sleep or rest if a flea found him lying on his bed mat; if a flea is
discovered in a Samoan house they know that a new-chum missionary has
been hovering near. The native girls and women are naturally modest and
they will blush at any coarse words or suggestions from white men; but
they are very fond of finery, and so often fall before the lure of the
whites, who are generally thousands of miles away when the victim
becomes a mother. At heart they are extremely religious and innately
feel that some great Power watches over them, but this feeling is
gradually dying away under the influence of the missionaries, who look
so human to their eyes as they live in luxury and wax fat in the best
Samoan houses. The Samoan has seen everything as it is and knows that
the white missionaries and traders are human beings like himself,
looking for all they can get and enjoying life to the uttermost, and so
the glamour is fading in the South Seas as it has faded in the West,
where many still believe all they hear and read about the converted
heathen who would rather die than sell his honour.
The whites consist chiefly of tourists, traders and missionaries of
various sects. Many of the missionaries are honest in their profession,
really believing all they teach, have weary eyes and remind one of those
bedraggled flies that crawl up the windowpane looking for light. The
traders are mostly rough, sunburnt, crooked-nosed men and do their best
to do well and work hard at their various trades. Some are a strange
mixture of the bushman and pirate. The honest ones toil hard to make
money and settle down prosperous in a shanty, furnished with a large
spittoon, pipes and cases of the best imported whisky, and a shakedown
bed, as close as possible to the ground, so that they can crawl by night
on their hands and knees from the nearest Apia bar-room straight into
bed. Stolid, square-headed Germans abound and speak as though they
helped to create the universe, drink a deal on the sly, are very coarse
when drunk, and it does not matter how well a thing is done they are
sure to say “But you should see the way they do that in Germany.” Most
of the Europeans wear white duck pants and broad-brimmed straw hats, and
do a deal of leaning against palm-trees, smoking and spitting, also
loafing by Apia saloon-bars, where they stand in huddled groups beneath
the coco-palms and watch the Samoans toddling by to the mission-rooms
with Bibles under their arms.
As the steamers and schooners call into the harbour, tourists and
sailors come ashore; some go on the spree, some get drunk and others go
curio-hunting. Sometimes the élite of Australian towns arrive on tour
and gaze on everyone with patronising eyes. I saw one lot from Sydney
arrive, people of high standing too; they had receding chins and staring
eyes like bits of glass rubbed over with fat and spoke with very
conventional voices. The natives, scantily clothed, go shuffling through
the streets, singing and jabbering. Apia smells of ripe bananas and
tropical vegetation. It is the modern Garden of Eden; the ghosts of Adam
and Eve roam the forest by night and listen to the laughter and wails of
their fallen children as they eat of the forbidden fruit and the ships
creep into the bays and again go seaward back to the shadows of the
cities.
[Illustration: NATIVE CANOES, FIJI]
Sailors and rovers settle down in the South Sea capitals, talk all day
of Rio, Shanghai, and Japanese girls that did the Eastern can-can,
drunken sprees in ’Frisco, phantom ships and wonderful fifty-day voyages
from London to Sydney on the _Cutty’s Ark_; old sea captains, mates with
master certificates, disappointed men, wrinkled and sea-beaten Scotch
engineers, dreaming of Glasgow, engine-rooms, donkey boilers and sea
bilges, and that beautiful young woman at Marseilles who lay in their
bunk berth so drunk that they could not wake her when the anchor was
going up, so kept her aboard in secret the whole voyage out to
Melbourne, where she went ashore and became a lady governess, taught
French, eventually married a vicar in the suburbs and became “Visiting
lady” and was beloved by all for her purity and winning ways. The
ancient old man from the Solomon Isles with sad eyes is to be seen there
too, still laughless and grim over the tragedy of that long-ago night
when his white wife disappeared, and after exploring the Island forest
the cannibalistic natives found him starving, gave him drink and meat,
and next day by the strangest coincidence possible he discovered that he
had eaten his own wife. The great truth of truth being stranger than
fiction is vividly revealed in all you see and hear in the Islands of
the far-away Pacific, where the good men brush aside the
conventionalities and go the whole hog, and the old sinners of the
European cities, seeking a haven of rest from the law, with all their
passions withered and asleep, become virtuous and moralise. They are
strange old fellows, good company and extremely interesting as they sit
by their bungalows and talk at night by South Sea shores. The waves
steal over the coral reefs and murmur mysteriously by the lagoons of
magic lands, dark with forest branches; midnight stars are reflected in
the clear harbour waters as the blue vault of heaven over your head
gleams with worlds that are twinkling and flashing and you dream you
hear them singing, and see writ on the wonderful canvas of starry space
the bright eternal words, expressing the tremendous loneliness of
Infinity that swallows up human imagination, leaving us only wonder and
hope.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXII
I leave the South Sea for Australia—Arrive in Sydney—I get hard up and
take a Partnership in a Flower Seed Business—The Stockman’s Daughter
Ethel—I meet an old-fashioned Australian Bushman—He gives me a
Night’s Lodging—I meet with Queensland Blacks—Alone in the
Bush—Brisbane
WITH regret I now leave the South Seas and once more start off on my
wanderings accompanied by my modest and faithful friend who always sang
happily or sadly in response to my own feelings—my violin.
Hornecastle was sorry to see me go. He and several comrades saw me off
as the anchor went up and I sailed away. I felt sad enough, for I had
seen some strange times and a good deal of life in those lovely Isles of
the Pacific.
I can still see the outrigged canoes following our ship across the bay
out to sea; they were filled with Samoans waving their hands and crying
bitterly as their departing relatives, all huddled round me on the deck,
sobbed loudly as they too waved their farewells, wiping their eyes with
their hands and tail ends of their scanty clothes, old sailor shirts and
cast-off European underclothes. It was a sad sight to see them moaning
by the ship’s rail and those who saw them off paddling away to keep in
sight as long as possible—daughters and sons, fathers and mothers,
bobbing about in the sunset water, some with their babies perched on
their backs, as the ship’s screw thundered full speed ahead and they
faded away.
Those emigrants were innocent Islanders, who I have no doubt had been
promised fine rewards to entice them to leave their native Isle for a
term of three years, where to go I did not know. Some of the sailors
said their destination was New Guinea, others the Queensland sugar
plantations; anyhow I am quite sure the best of the bargain was not on
their side. One of the women made an attempt to leap over the ship’s
side and escape, but her friends held her back, but they all continued
to wail and howl like children as they fully realised that they were
really off on the big ship bound for other lands! Some of them lay on
the deck flat on their bellies, beating it with their hands; the elder
men gazed with tears in their eyes across the wake at their home-staying
friends, till the following canoes and their native shores died away. I
doubt if many of them ever saw their native Isle again. I hope they did.
They were stuffed down in the forepeak just by the fo’c’sle all
together, women and men.
In a few days they were all themselves again, pattering along the decks
singing away, cursing the cook’s life as they took their food to him to
cook, bread-fruit, stuff which he baked for them in the galley, also
jams which tasted something like dried-up baked turnips. I shall never
forget the surprise of those Samoans as we entered Sydney Harbour. As
soon as Circular Quay came in sight round the bend they lost control of
themselves completely, waving their arms about in their excitement
pointing to the big buildings, opening their mouths, showing their white
teeth and shining eyes agog, just like little children at their first
Lord Mayor’s Show.
Two days after I met them walking down George Street dressed up in robes
and sandals, all close together looking at the shops. They stay in
Sydney a few days and then they are shipped off to their final
destination.
I was glad to be in Sydney again, where I met chief-mate Poppy, who
afterwards was an officer on one of the clipper ships whereon I too
voyaged. He was a fine fearless sailor, square built, and had merry grey
eyes. I spent a lot of time with him for I had a little cash left and
took things easy for a few days.[8] I went to the post office and found
two letters from home and some cash. I immediately wrote to England
asking forgiveness for not writing before and assured them all that I
was getting on well. I forget now what I really said in that letter, but
I know that I gave myself a leg-up, as they say, and did a bit of
blowing on my own account. Anyway whether all I said was true or not it
made them happy and I was very pleased also when the reply came telling
me how proud they all were at my success in life, and two or three pages
of good advice how to keep the success going.
Footnote 8:
Mr Poppy later became captain on a clipper ship, and was lost with all
hands off Cape Horn.
Ah! dear English people, do not believe all the wonderful things you
hear from your children abroad. Did you hear the real truth you would
not call round on your relatives reading that letter over and over till
your voice got husky, but it may be that you would sit on your bed and
weep your heart out. I’ve seen your successful sons, have sat by them in
the dirty lodging-house attic and watched them write those things that
made you happy. I have also been their solitary visitor in the hospital
as they died of disease and then I have sent the last letter home and
felt too wretched to write home myself. Of course some _do_ get on and
do very well, but some of the adventurous boys are weak with their
passions, and so go to the wall. I could say a good deal on this
subject, but I will leave it for someone else. But while I am on the
subject I must say it would be well if fathers took their sons aside and
told them of those temptations and the awful results before they sent
them across the world alone. I will tell you this much—hundreds of fine
young fellows have found themselves stranded in the colonial cities,
slept out, got into bad company and yielding to the temptations of
despair have never been heard of again for five or even ten years, as
most of the Australian gaols are away in the bush many miles up country
and the prison notepaper arriving in England would tell the tale. So
time goes on and the bright English lad, the pride of the school and the
mother’s joy, emerges from the gaol door, embittered by confinement, his
only comrades the convicts who were released before him and whom he
naturally seeks in sympathy and so becomes that which he never in his
wildest dreams dreamed of becoming. But I must not get into the habit of
moralising over the downfalls and temptations that meet the emigrant
youth who arrives in the colonies as I did, expecting to see a workless
world and a life before him of charming adventure. So I will proceed
with my own immediate experiences.