Changes in Samoa—Curios—A Moonlit Scene—Saints and Fakirs—Indians—Apia
Town—Vailima—The Chief Mataaga—A Forest Ballroom—The Wandering
Scribe—A Legend of Samoa—An old Shellback’s Yarns—Tuputa and the
Sinless Lands—A Tribal Waltz
IT was some time since I had left Samoa. Things there seemed to have
considerably changed. Many of my friends, both natives and white men,
had gone away to another island. I went up to Mulinuu village, expecting
to see my friend Raeltoa, the Samoan, and to my great regret learnt that
his wife had died of consumption and that he had gone away to the Line
Islands, in the Equatorial Group. Robert Louis Stevenson had died some
months before, and was at rest on the top of Vaea Mountain. Indeed with
his death the old Samoa seemed to have passed away.
I felt rather depressed for a time, but I met an American tourist,
staying at the German hotel in Apia, who was very eccentric, and he
cheered me up considerably. He was a collector of native curios, and his
whole life seemed to be centred on his strange hobby. He invited me into
his apartments, and I could hardly move for the lumber and his large
crates of native pottery, old breech-loading weapons, cutlasses,
mummified human heads, dried native feet cut off at the ankles,
war-clubs, human teeth and skeletons, native musical instruments and
barbarian furniture. He talked of nothing else but his gruesome
collection. He had a high, bald head and beak-like nose, whereon he was
eternally fingering his pince-nez, which kept falling off whilst he
enthusiastically held up relics for my inspection. His passion for
getting curios seemed never satisfied. We dined at a native’s house
together; suddenly he lifted the cloth and saw that the table was a
rough, native-made table of platted cane and bamboo. Immediately he
bargained for it, and to the native’s delight purchased it, and off we
went with it. How he got them all away from the hotel I don’t know, for
he had a regular cargo of stuff, but eventually he got his curios on
board a steamer and went off to San Francisco.
I stayed on in Apia for several weeks, joining a party of tourists, and
with them I visited the various scenes and islands of the group. As I
write, in a dream I see the slopes rising from the sea, lying silent in
the moonlight. The curling smoke from the camp fires steals above the
still coco-palms that shelter the huts of the native villages. The big,
hive-shaped houses are musical with humming melody and the jabbering
voices of rough-haired native girls and women. Some squat cross-legged
by door-holes, whence emerge tiny, brown, naked children, to turn head
over heels, or race like joyful puppies after each other round the dens.
Big full-blooded Samoan chiefs smile and show their white teeth as they
roll banana-leaf cigarettes between their dusky fingers. Across the flat
lies Apia town with its one main street; beyond the inland plateaux
rise, and far off you can see the moonlit waves breaking into patches
like white moss on the level ocean plains.
By the copra and coco plantations are the emigrant settlements, where
tired coolies, most of them Malay Indians, rest after their toil. Native
women linger near them, for they are generous men those coolies, and
give the velvet-skinned native girls sham jewellery. The Indian _sadhu_
(saint) sits by the line of dens and stores under the palms; he looks
like some carved holy image as he stares with bright, unblinking eyes.
The natives’ wooden idols have long since been smashed, or have rotted
away, and that living idol of the East is one from many cargoes that
have arrived to take the place of the old deaf South Sea idols. The new
idols are real; they have live tongues and eyes that lure on true
believers, converts to Allah, to do monstrous things. The deaf, dumb
wooden gods of heathen times were sanctified compared with these new
immigrant idols that breathe!
That old fakir, with outstretched withered arm that brings him reverence
and cash, represents Hinduism, or Buddha. His thick beard is almost
solid with filth, where-from at intervals, out to the hot sky, buzz big
blow-flies. Just across the track is the bazaar, wooden cabins under the
mangroves and coco-palms, where the Indians sell jewellery, the Koran,
and richly coloured dress materials to the Samoan women. The Indians
appear fine-looking men when dressed, with their dark, brilliant eyes
and curly, close-cropped beards. They swear to all things by the holy
prophet Mahomet, and wear a poetic smile that enlarges when you are not
looking to a sardonic grin! Native women meet them at dark under the
coco-palms, stroke their beards and gaze secretly up into their faces
with passionate admiration.
That pretty Samoan girl, with staring, romantic eyes and rough,
bronze-coloured hair, who only a week ago gave herself body and soul to
some Indian, the scum of the East, sits alone under the dark mangroves
by the lagoon and thinks and thinks of the day before her fall. A red,
decorated loin-cloth reaches to her waist, the forest winds kiss the
maiden curves of her brown, flower-like bosom. She is very young: her
childhood’s dolls are still unbroken, and are being loved and nursed by
her little sisters who live on the neighbouring Savaii Isle. Her father
was eaten by a shark last year, and her mother is married to a white man
who is never sober.
Not far away sit a group of Indian women, dark and evil-looking, with
round faces. Dressed in gorgeous garments of rich yellow and crimson,
they are certainly attractive; earrings dangle from their ears and some
of them have a silver hoop through the nose. They loll under the
coco-palms, whisper viciousness, and mortally hate the handsome Samoan
girls.
The mail steamer arrived in Apia harbour a few hours ago. Along the
white, dusty, inland track goes the fair, handsome white woman, Maria
Mandy. She is off to her bungalow up the hill, a secluded, romantic
spot. Her round, pretty face is getting quite sunburnt and brown. By her
side walks an aristocratic-looking tourist; he wears pince-nez, is
deeply religious and in a great hurry! Maria is dressed up to “the
nines,” is scented and looks fine and sweet: the “light o’ Love” of a
score of German naval officers and men of respectable repute, she has
grown wealthy and intends to go soon to Sydney. With her wit and courtly
polish she will get on well in Australia, and will probably get into
Government House society, be extremely virtuous and so shocked that she
will suggest the removal from the select clique of such suspicious
characters as old Colonel B——, who will foam at the mouth and wonder why
he is snubbed. Mrs S. A. and Lady H. B. will go into hysterics, weep,
grind their delicate white teeth, look at the ceiling of their bedroom
and ask heaven who could possibly have guessed about those intrigues;
and they will never dream of the knowing Apia harlot—handsome Maria
Mandy.
That fat, thick-necked German official, who likes Samoa better than the
Berlin suburbs, is out walking alone; he is just off to see Salvao Marva
and gaze upon her through those big-rimmed, academic spectacles. He is
nearly sixty, and pretty Marva is nearly fifteen years old! No one knows
about it though. He is a good man at home, plays the Austrian zither
perfectly, and sings in a deep religious bass voice folk-songs of the
Fatherland. Romantic Marva loves those songs, and knows them all by
heart; she has a voice like a wild bird, and you do not feel so hard
upon the in-auspicious fall of German culture. He is due back in Berlin
soon, for his time is up in six months, so he is quite safe, and poor
Marva can place the parental responsibility for her baby on to the back
of the beachcomber, Bill Grimes, who will say, “Well I’m blowed, if this
ain’t all right,” then accept the position and make his home in the
South Seas after all.
[Illustration: HONGIS TRACK, ROTORUA, N.Z.]
Maria Mandy is not the only lady who will become respectable and make
the devil rub his hands and chuckle with delight. On the beach stroll
other white women, and droves of pretty half-caste girls who will
eventually get jobs as “ladies’ maids” to touring families that call at
Apia on the homeward voyage to New York and London. They have fine times
those girls with the German and English sailors, or with “perfect
gentlemen,” and sometimes a black-sheep missionary who has been
dismissed from the L.M.S. Off they go on the spree and forget themselves
and do things that make even the beachcomber Bill Grimes rub his eyes
and stare; for, after all, he’s not so bad; he _can_ some day, in that
“far-off event of perfect good,” buy a new suit of clothes; but the
beachcombers that loaf and eat the fruit of frailty in this Eden of the
South Seas can never buy another soul.
Hark! the harbour is musical with voices, for this is fair Italy of the
Southern Seas, where natives paddle their canoes and sing their weird
melodies as naturally as men breathe. You can hear the splash of the
paddles and oars as they cut the thickly star-mirrored water. The native
boats are bringing sailors ashore from the ships that arrived at
twilight. The moonlit shore and the palm-clad slopes look like fairyland
to the silent ships lying out in the harbour. The men step ashore, pay
one shilling, or one mark, each, then off go the canoes back to the
ships for other crews, as the groups of sailors go up to Apia town.
Before they get there dusky guides offer their services, and they see
the sights—such sights too! No missionaries could ever reform such
creatures as they see. One of them, she is one of many, wears almost
nothing, the curved, thick lips in her wide mouth murmur forth alluring
Samoan speech. Her girth is enormous, and her brown bosom heaves with
simulated professional passion, like a wave on the treacherous deep dark
ocean of sensuality—whereon so often travelling men are shipwrecked. Her
eyes are large, the pupils widely encircled with white, and warm with
the sunlight gleam of downright wickedness; she has been taught her art
in the vast university of experience with white men in the foremost
ranks of civilisation’s pioneer tramp! Paid vice was never known in
Samoa till the white men came; but now she lures to her velvety brown
arms the unwary innocence of fragile sailormen and tourists who come
from London on the civilised Thames; where the missionaries hail from,
who in our land of purity, of course, cannot exert and bring into play
their noble efforts, and so through innocence, O England, my England,
your children fall before the lure of the wicked South!
Low-caste Samoan women are not all hideous; some have large, innocent
eyes alive with wonder; half angel and half devil they look as they
stand before the camera and, answering the stern voice of the operator,
strive to look modest and sweet.
By the edge of the small lagoon, under those tall coco-nut-trees sit
four little naked baby girls. It is dark, but their brown faces imaged
in the water can be seen by the brilliant moonlight; they look like
truant cherubims from Paradise out on the spree, as they sit side by
side whispering musical Samoan baby words, and kissing the rag doll that
was made in Germany. Their Samoan father is away in a far village on a
visit to a wedding feast; if you listen you can hear the far-off sounds
of tom-toms and cymbal-clanging coming across on the drifting forest
wind that brings with it odours of wild, decaying flowers and fruit.
Their mother is fast asleep by the door of their native home close by;
she sleeps soundly, and the mongrel dog’s snout is couched softly on her
bare, warm, brown breast. It looks a mystical, beautiful world, like
some spiritual land beyond the stars, as the bright eyes of those tiny
faces peep through the wind-blown palm leaves; and I watch them in my
dreams to-night, though long since those little girls are women and now
meet the eyes of Indian, Chinese and European men.
Civilisation’s iron foot is on the hills, and along the tracks that lead
inland where mission schools and churches stand, to collect on weekdays
and Sundays the high-class native folk who live in comfortable
Polynesian homes. The night is hot, starry and almost windless, and
handsome Samoan youths attired in the _lava-lava_ (loin-cloth) patter
swift-footed along the tracks under the coco-nut and tropical trees that
shelter the primitive homes of the South Sea paradise. Samoan girls with
wild, bright eyes, round, plump, brown faces, and curved figures as
perfect as sculptural art, pass and repass up the forest tracks. They
are singing Samoan songs that intensify the romantic, dream-like
atmosphere of the tropical night—an atmosphere not even to be dispelled
by the wailing cry of the native babies, who give short, wild, smothered
screams as they lose and then suddenly recover the breasts of sleeping
mothers in those thatched homes by the palms and banana groves. The vast
night sky, agleam with stars, shines like a mighty mirror. You can see
the red glow of the reflection from the volcanic crater miles away on
Savaii’s Isle.
If you go up the slope and stand on the plateau, away inland, when dawn
is stealing in grey tints along the ocean horizon, awakening the birds
on Vaea Mountain, and the native homes are astir, you can distinctly see
afar something that looks like a cow-shed by coco-palms and thick jungle
growth. It is Vailima, the home of Robert Louis Stevenson. One light
gleams in the large shed-room, and the intellectual, sensitive face of
the poet-author moves there in the gloom. He has come back from Apia
town and is tired, yet secretly as pleased as the two old shellbacks who
have carried his curios back, and who hitch up their trousers and cough
respectfully as the world-famous author sneaks them in and gives each a
bumping glass of the best brand. How quietly his keen eyes gaze upon
them as they drink! On a shelf the large clock ticks warningly. He
glances at it now and again as the belated sailors yarn on, grow more
and more garrulous and continue their strange experiences, that cling to
the wonderful, distilling brain of the listener as moonlight clings to
deep, dark waters. At last, with intellectual delicacy, they are
hurriedly slipped off; for soon the respectable folk, whom he gave the
slip to early in the evening, will return, and he must not be seen in
such company again. The old shellbacks grip the extended, thin, delicate
hand, look into the keen eyes and wipe their mouths as they go down the
narrow track. “He’s a gentleman ’e is, d——d if ’e ain’t,” they say to
each other, as the silent, lonely man they have just left sits and
dreams on alone, and thinks and feels those things that no book ever
did, or ever can, tell.
A few miles away lives the great high chief Mataafa; he knows Tusitala,
the writer of tales. Mataafa is the old King of Samoa: his warriors have
charged up those slopes and the sound of the guns from the enemy’s
warships echoed and re-echoed across the bay. It is all like some
far-off dream to me that in my boyhood I should have met and fiddled to
the Napoleon of the South Seas, for Mataafa was exiled, though there the
similarity ends. I can still see the handsome, intelligent face and
remember the quick, kind eyes of Samoa’s dethroned king. I did not know,
or at least realise, who Mataafa was, as he sat on a chest in the
schooner’s cabin in Apia harbour. I knew he was someone important by the
skipper’s behaviour and respectful attention. Only long after did I
clearly realise that I was in at the death at one of the most tragic
periods of Samoa’s history. I helped row the exiled king ashore and went
with him to Mulinuu village, where I stayed the night, and then rowed
him back in the ship’s boat again. Had I known the truth I would have
clung to the old king with all the romantic vigour of my soul. The
opportunity of my boyish dreams had presented itself, but I knew it not.
How I would have striven to lean on that chieftain’s right arm, helping
in some tragical drama of war and intrigue that would have given me the
fame that my boyish aspirations yearned for as I read the novels of
Alexandre Dumas. Alas! I can only remember a sad, aged face in a South
Sea forest homestead, in a schooner’s dingy cabin, or earnestly talking
under the forest trees by night to loyal chiefs ere he returned to the
ship. I saw him three or four times ashore, and entertained him in the
refuge where he lived with his faithful chiefs. Also I played the violin
to him several times, while he smiled gravely and the garrulous skipper
drank whisky and sang out of tune, or read out loudly snatches from _The
Samoan Times_, which was a paper something after the style in size of
_The Dead Bird_, published in Sydney, but suppressed and issued again as
_The Bird of Freedom_.
Behind the stores in Apia’s street is the primeval ballroom where I
played the violin to the Samoan grandees, and to tripping, white-shoed
German officials, while five half-caste girls in pink frocks, with
crimson ribbons in their forests of hair, went through the Siva dances.
Robert Louis Stevenson gazed on, or argued with the crusty German
official, who was red in the face as Stevenson expressed his opinions on
Samoan politics. Just below too, down the street, is the bar-room, where
I played the violin with the manager’s wife, who was a good pianist. I
only performed there once: a trader was half-seas over and was arguing
with a German official; suddenly he picked my violin up and hit the
German over the head with it. There was a great scene and the trader was
thrown out. Everyone laughed to see the look on my face as I scanned the
fiddle to see if it had been damaged; even the manager and his wife put
their fists in their mouths to hide a noisy smile. The German shouted:
“Mein Gott! I vill see that this mans be arrested! Mein Gott! Mein
Gott!”
It’s a lively place, this Samoan isle. There sits an aged, tattooed
native from Motootua village. He is a wandering scribe, a poet and
author of the South Seas, and well beloved by all his critics, who
mostly wear no clothes! He does not write on paper, but engraves on the
brains of his audiences his memories, impromptu poems and
improvisations; or he tells of Samoan history and poetic lore. He wears
the primitive _ridi_ to his bony knees and a large shawl of native
tappu-cloth round his brown shoulders; tall and majestic-looking, with
strong, imaginative face, when he stands quite still and lifts one arm
to heaven he looks like an exiled scapegrace god.
With eyes shining brilliantly he tells you the tale of creation, how
man- and woman-kind came on earth. Ages ago a giant turtle, like a fish
that walked on a thousand legs, came up from the bottom of the ocean and
saw the blue sky for the first time, and far away the coral reefs and
forest-clad shores of Samoa. Full of excitement, it slashed its tail,
swam to the isle and crept ashore. Once on dry land it could not move
and get back to its native ocean again. The sun blazed on its tremendous
back as it crouched and died, and underneath its vast shell a plot of
tiny crimson and blue flowers trembled with fear in the sudden darkness
that had fallen over them. When the giant turtle was dead its crumbling
flesh fed the flowers with moisture, while they cried bitterly at being
hidden from the beautiful golden sunlight. When only the shell was left,
and the sun was shining beautifully, the flowers peeped out and saw the
green hills and coco-palms, and found that they were able to move: out
they all ran and tripped up the shore, a delighted flock of laughing
faces, and climbed the coco-nut and palm trees—they were Samoan girls!
That same night a cloud was leisurely travelling across the clear skies
with a cargo of male stars asleep on its breast; and as it passed right
over the very spot where the new girls were climbing and clinging to the
trees, the high chief of the stars, who was old and grey, looked over
the side of the cloud and was astonished, for he saw the girls and at
once called loudly to the youthful, sleeping stars, who rubbed their
eyes and jumped up. They were beautiful youths with bright faces. “Look
down there,” said the old, grey star, and all the young stars looked and
saw the Samoan maidens climbing about the tree-tops. “Oh, what shall we
do to get down to them?” they all wailed, and the old, grey star said,
“Ah, you were happy till I awoke you from sleep, but now your passions
are awake and you cry aloud for sorrow.” Then they all became impatient
and fierce, and cried out: “Stop the cloud, stop the cloud”; and the
old, grey-bearded star sighed and said: “So shall it be.” The moon at
once shone out in the sky and the old leader put his hand up to the orb
and filled his arms with beautiful moonlight ere he struck the cloud
with his magic breath and the thick, dark mist dissolving fell as
sparkling rain softly to the isle far below. The bright moonlight
clinging to the falling drops made ropes of moonbeams dangle to the
forest tree-tops, on which the laughing stars slid as they went down,
down—as beautiful youths, to fall into the outstretched arms of the
surprised maidens. And that’s how man and woman first came to the Samoan
Isles!
Many more were the strange but really poetic tales told by him and by
other wandering authors, but their memories and the children of their
poetic imaginations are forgotten for ever. I do not think many of the
old-time South Sea legends have ever been collected and translated, and
so they only survive in the biographical writing of men who visited the
islands and happened to have retentive memories for such things as
poetic lore, and so preserved some of those old fragments of Samoan
stories, as I have attempted to do from my recollection of many of them.
The lore of the South Seas has faded and has been replaced by tragic
human drama and rumour. Subject matter for three-volume novels is
plentiful in Samoa; indeed throughout the whole of the South Seas you
could draw and never drain dry the living fountains of human drama.
Peaceful-looking homesteads, clean, religious and happy, abound, but
some are tense with passion. By the mission room down at Mulinuu lives
pretty Lavo; she is only sixteen and deeply religious. She loves the
handsome white missionary with all her soul, but dares not speak out or
confess. Eventually he goes away back to his own country, and a few days
later they find poor Lavo’s body in the lagoon. She looks beautiful even
in death, as she still clutches the photograph of the homeward-bound
missionary. Her native relatives wring their hands and wail; they lay
her in the native cemetery just by the plateau, and sing sadly of her
childhood till she is forgotten.
A white man was found with the side of his head blown off last night; he
arrived at Apia a week ago, looking worried and haggard. All evidence of
his identity had been destroyed by him, excepting a torn,
half-obliterated letter which reads like this:
“MY OWN DEAR R——. Yes, I still love you, and will not believe
you did that. I read the full account in this morning’s
_Chronicle_. My heart is heavy, dear; give yourself up and face
it. Oh, my darling, don’t leave the country. I love you, and
will die, I am sure, if you go away. Meet me to-night at same
place. I long to see your poor dear face. God watch over you.
Yours ever,
E——.”
The German High Commissioner kept the revolver that was found by the
dead man’s side, and his fat old wife took possession of the photograph
that was found on him. She has tacked it up on her bedroom wall; it’s
such a nice, happy-looking, girlish face. They buried the suicide in the
whites’ cemetery, at the far end, among the “no-name graves.”
On the slopes around Apia a few emigrants from far-off countries live in
comfortable bungalows. They are happy with their wives and children.
Their memory of the cities and turmoil of the old country is sweeter for
the dreaming distance; they were a bit homesick at first, but now they
have become contented and love the new peaceful surroundings, and look
forward to the arrival of the mails. They still suffer, though, with the
unrestful disease of the far-away suburban towns of advanced
civilisation, and so cannot sleep for wondering who the strange couple
are who rent the solitary bungalow on the edge of the forest up in the
hills. It is quite evident that the new-comer is a gentleman, for he
speaks well and has polished ways, but his wife talks like a
servant-girl; she’s pretty, though. They arrived suddenly in Apia, and
three months after the baby was born. He seems very fond of the baby,
and the mother too, but he often gets very despondent. He’s a handsome
man and does not look a bit practical; indeed he looks as though for the
sake of affection and his word he would sacrifice all ambition and leave
the world behind him. He seems to hate respectable people, and only goes
down to the Apia bar-rooms to mix with old sailors and traders and the
remnants of the beach; he stands treat and is a godsend to them, for he
seems to have plenty of cash. One old shellback entertains him for hours
with wonderful tales of other days, and his comrades sit by and silently
smoke and drink as the bar becomes hazy with tobacco smoke. The lights
grow dim as the old sailor’s yarn rolls the world back, and in the now
romantic atmosphere of the bar shades of old pioneers dance ghostly
wise; old schooners and slave galleons are anchored in the harbour; you
can hear the laughter and song of dead sailors and traders. They are
dancing jigs, their sea-boots shuffle, under the coco-palms just outside
the bar-room, the bright eyes of dark native girls shine as they whirl
clinging to their arms: how they welcome the white men from the far-away
Western world—the men whose ships long ago died down the seaward
sunsets, and faded away beyond the sky-line into Time’s silent sea ere
our generation was born.
Out on the promontory sits the high chief Tuputo in his homestead. He
has a noble, wrinkled, tattooed face, and, though he belongs to the old
school, he wears glasses. The lizard slips across his moonlit floor, and
through his door he can see the silvered waves and the wind-stirred
coco-nut trees twinkling by the barrier reefs; the waves are breaking
and wailing as they wailed and broke in his childhood. He has been a
sailor in the South Seas; he remembers tribal wars in Fiji and Samoa and
has refused many invitations to secret cannibalistic festivals. Now he
sits reading the English newspapers, for long ago they taught him to
read English, and he is a staunch Catholic. Often he reads and wonders
over the terrible crimes that are reported in the police news of his
late-dated London newspapers. He had once, long ago, thought that
England and New York were sinless lands ethereal with Christian dreams,
imparadised cities, their spires glittering in the sunlight of the
Golden Age. If not, why did missionaries leave them to come across the
big seas to Samoa, and all the isles of the Southern Seas?
The great world war has not commenced yet, but even now his withered
hands itch to clutch his disused war-club and sally forth to take
revenge on those white men who laugh at his majestic bearing; those men
who stole his isles and brought rum and vice to contaminate the virtue
of his race. How spiteful will he feel when he wipes his spectacles,
and, astonished, reads the truth! But then he will cool down, look at
his innocent old war-club on his homestead wall and offer his humble
services for the vast tribalistic war clash in the white man’s lands,
while Thakambau and Tano, the cannibal kings, and Ritova and King
Naulivan, who never heard the word culture, sigh and turn in their
graves to think that they are dead, while the very world is trembling
with glorious, bloodthirsty battle. Ah, well, their children’s children
are coming to help us: may the old Thakambau spirit still be alive in
their blood to help the advance of culture—the civilisation of sad
humanity. Let us hope, too, that our semi-savage Allies will not eat the
fallen foe! But I must proceed with my own wanderings, for I have a long
way to travel yet.
Samoa still rises silently in moonlight out of the sea of my dreams. I
can hear the barbarian orchestra clanging away down in the native
village, as Samoan girls and youths, and two or three white men, waltz
under the palms just below the plateau, where groves of orange-trees
hang their golden fruit amongst dark leaves. As I play the violin the
semi-savage people whirl to the wild rhythm of the forest ballroom music
of a tribal waltz.
[Music: TRIBAL WALTZ. (_Barbarian._)
Composed by A. S. M.
_Tempo di Valse._
_Con delicatezza._
etc.
_Ped._
_espress._
_mf_
etc.]
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