WESTWARD HO!
The following day was the Niué Sunday. It had been my intention to
sail soon after daybreak, but Mr. Lawes seemed to be so anxious that
we should attend the morning service that I agreed. It seems that the
influence of the Mission is waning from a variety of causes. Chief
among these is the passion for foreign travel, which, having been the
cause of the peopling of these remote spots, still possesses all the
natives of the smaller Polynesian islands. Every year numbers of young
men return from abroad and disturb the still waters of the island with
fascinating tales of the emancipation of foreign lands, where men get
drunk and swear and break the Sabbath with impunity. They play upon
the mercantile instinct of the old men with garbled stories, told
them by beachcombers, of the money that the missionaries make out of
the natives. Every year Mr. Lawes, who has devoted thirty years'
unremitting labour to these people, finds arrayed against him a growing
opposition composed of all the "bad hats" in the island.
The church was crowded. We were placed with the other Europeans within
a sort of chancel rail, facing the congregation, who sat on the matted
floor. Seven-eighths at least were women, whose enormous straw hats,
heavily trimmed with artificial flowers, resembled a vast flower bed.
Here and there a dusky face and a pair of bright eyes peeped out, but
behind the first two rows stretched an unbroken area of hat brim, like
a light-coloured soil in which the flowers were growing. From the
roots of the bed proceeded a whimpering chorus of babies, and every
now and then, when a louder burst threatened to drown the voice of the
preacher, officials stationed at intervals round the walls stirred the
flowers at the noisiest spot with a long pole. Then a woman would rise,
producing from among her petticoats a jolly fat baby, who instinctively
threw his legs apart in the proper position for straddling his mother's
back, while she threw a folded cloth over her shoulders as a sling
for him to sit in. He would then smile complacently at us as he was
carried out, as who should say, "I have won my point; I advise you
to howl too." Babies flowed out all through the sermon, but there was
little cessation of the overtone of whimper. At the end of the sermon
Mr. Lawes announced that the ship was leaving, and that it was not
improbable that a salute might be fired. This, he explained, must not
be accounted to us for unrighteousness; a ship belonging to the Queen
was no Sabbath-breaker. It was simply a matter of the calendar, because
the ship, coming from a far land, reckoned its days differently,
and counted the Niuéan Sabbath a Monday. If anyone in that great
congregation remembered the petty officers' clown cricket on what was
the ship's Sabbath, they did not show it.
Shaking hands is better than rubbing noses, but that is all that can
be said for it, for, where two Niuéans of the old time rubbed noses,
one hundred insist upon shaking hands. Every male of the congregation
approached us in unending file at the church door to indulge in
this friendly exercise, and, thinking that this was to pass for our
farewell, we had not the heart to escape. Were I made Resident of the
island, the first bill that I would introduce to the Fono would be a
"Bill for Abolishing the Pernicious Custom of Hand-shaking" (short
title, "The Salutations Act, 1901"). It would contain a single clause
substituting for contact with the hands a vulgar nod, with the optional
addition of the word "Alofa!" on pain of being sentenced to shake
the handle of the village pump until the village reservoir was full.
But legislation in such matters is not invariably successful even in
Tonga, the most overgoverned community in the world. The ancient form
of salutation to superiors in Tonga was to drop everything that you
were carrying and to crouch at the roadside with the head sunk between
the knees. When the country, under the guiding hand of its Wesleyan
pastors, set out to seek _fakasivilaise_ (which is "civilisation"), and
decreed it "to be the will of God that man should be free, as He has
made all men of one blood," some modification was felt to be necessary.
King George Tubou I. himself settled the point in his fine autocratic
manner. His subjects, high and low alike, were to exchange greetings
by raising the hand perpendicularly from the elbow about six inches
from the right ear--an invention of His Majesty's own, suggesting a
compromise between a friendly wave of the hand and a military salute.
And, having noticed that the natural cheek of the Tongan swelled
mountainously when he could look down upon his fellows from the saddle,
he further decreed that men should dismount from their horses when they
encountered the person or passed the house of any member of his House
of Lords. Ten years ago, while he lived, you might have seen his decree
in daily practice in the streets of Nukualofa; now Jack has grown so
much better than his master that all outward marks of deference have
passed away, men jostle their chiefs openly in the road, good manners
and respect for authority have perished with their outward symbols,
and the only person in whose presence a Tongan lays aside his jaunty
swagger is a mounted policeman. A fine of one dollar or four days'
imprisonment still frowns upon the disrespectful from the pages of the
statute book, but the noble loses dignity by prosecuting, while the
policeman gains promotion.
At the Mission House the last box was being packed, and, despite our
entreaties, Mrs. Lawes was generously stripping her house of all her
curiosities as parting gifts--shells, rare mats, barbaric ornaments
and specimens of ingenuity in plaiting. If the boat had not been lying
in jeopardy among the rocks below, there would have been nothing
left on her walls or in her cabinets. This lavish bounty was to be
the impression we were to carry away from this delightful island,
wherein we had been overwhelmed with a hospitality that we can never
repay, and with a kindness that we shall never forget. The path to the
landing-place was lined with our native friends pressing forward for a
parting hand-clasp. Down we scrambled to the boat, which rose and fell
with the swell between two walls of jagged coral; we were afloat again,
the features of our friends waving to us from the landing-place grew
blurred and indistinct, the three-pounders banged, we were off. In a
few minutes H.M.S. _Porpoise_ was dipping her nose into the swell, the
island was fading into a grey haze on the horizon, and it was difficult
to believe that we had not dreamed the whole adventure.
It has been a year of high emotion for Niué-Fekai. Six weeks later--on
June 1st--the _Tutunekai_, a steam yacht belonging to the New Zealand
Government, brought Mr. Seddon, the Premier of New Zealand, who, while
cruising for the sake of his health, was occupied with his scheme of
federating the Pacific Islands under New Zealand.
On October 19th--six months to a day from the date of our
landing--H.M.S. _Mildura_ arrived with Lord Ranfurly, Governor of New
Zealand, to proclaim the formal annexation of the island.
The natives must be sorely puzzled by the solemn pageant of
flag-hoisting, for the Protectorate Jack was hauled down, and a
counterpart of it run up in its stead with the usual salutes. The
deed of cession was signed, like the treaty, in the school-house, two
villages, Alofi and Avatele, dissenting, until they saw that they were
to be outvoted by the other nine. There are, it seems, even in Niué a
few professional grumblers, who accused King Tongia and his chiefs of
having sold the country to a foreign power, and even went so far as to
attack Mr. Lawes for having acted as interpreter at the proclamation of
the Protectorate. The ringleader had come to my meeting primed with a
hostile speech, but, having been denied an opportunity for unburdening
himself, he discharged it upon the next meeting of the Fono. He was
busy organising opposition to Lord Ranfurly, when, in an unlucky
moment for his cause, he was called up to sign the deed of cession as
the representative of Avatele. Thus was he impaled on the horns of a
dilemma. If he refused, another would have gone down to posterity as a
greater than he in his own village; if he accepted, he stultified his
own words. Staggered by the compliment, or reflecting, perhaps, that it
is the written word that endures, he cast his principles to the winds
and signed the deed. That is the last that we shall hear of the Home
Rulers of Niué.
My readers will rejoice to hear that King Tongia is not to suffer the
mortification of parting with the title for which he worked so hard.
Filtered through His Majesty's peculiar cast of mind this part of the
agreement may not be without embarrassment to the new Resident. So
far from suffering any eclipse, Tongia emerges from the late events
with an added dignity, according to his rendering of the clause that
refers to him in the agreement, "It has pleased the two of us, Me and
Victoria ..." (_Kua metaki ko e tokoua a maua, Ko au mo Vitoria_). To
do him justice, I think that if he had been offered the alternative
between abdicating unconditionally with a life pension, or continuing
to enjoy his high title without emolument, he would have taken the
pension; but, since that temptation was never put in his way, he is
quite right to cling to what he has. And who shall grudge him this
modest satisfaction? As Mr. Gladstone once said of Peel, "I should not
say that he was egotistical, but I should say that his own personality
occupied no inconsiderable area in his mental vision." There are worse
men and weaker kings than Tongia of Niué-Fekai.
The future of this interesting little people depends upon the man
chosen by the New Zealand Government to be the first Resident. A wise,
sympathetic, and patient man, endowed with a sense of humour, not
over-sensitive about his dignity, and content to gain his point by
suasion rather than pressure, will be able to do what he pleases with
the people; a pompous or choleric person will have the island about his
ears before he has been there a month. New Zealand has not always been
wise in her choice of residents for her dependencies, though no colony
has better material to choose from. During the next few years she will
be on her trial: if she governs her new dependencies wisely, keeping
out the liquor traffic, and fostering the prosperity and contentment of
her native fellow-subjects, she may prove herself fit to be entrusted
with the government of a great South Sea confederation; but if she uses
her new dependencies merely as a means of rehabilitating her declining
South Sea trade, and is cynically indifferent to the interests of the
natives, she will find herself with a new and more difficult Native
Question on her hands, and her great scheme will be rudely shattered.
In her own interest, therefore, besides that of the sturdy, energetic
little people that she has taken under her wing, she will pray for a
wisdom in her second experiment of governing natives that was sadly
wanting in her first.
As I began this account of the island with a letter from one king of
Niué, I will end it with that of another. I wanted to bring back with
me autograph letters from the native sovereigns for the wonderful
collection of Her Majesty, the late Queen. Probably the last presents
that she received from abroad were those that we brought back from the
newest and most distant parts of the great empire. From the King of
Tonga we brought a piece of red hand-woven cloth, which had been thrown
about the shoulders of his ancestor by Captain Cook in 1772, and had
been religiously preserved as an heirloom in the royal family out of
reverence for the memory of the great "Tute"; from the King of Niué
came the letter of which this is a translation:--
"Niué, 23 May, 1900.
"To Her Majesty
"Queen Victoria,
"Queen of Great Britain.
"Thanks to the Lord of Heaven, for through Him we have peace upon
Earth. I, the King of Niué, send greeting to Your Majesty, the
great Queen of Britain, and to your chiefs and governors. We, the
King and Chiefs of Niué, send our thanks for the portrait of the
Queen of Great Britain that has reached Niué. We, the chiefs and
people of Niué, men, women, and children, gaze at the portrait.
"Thanks! Thanks! Great Thanks!
"Thanks for your great thought of us! Thanks for stretching out
your arm to protect Niué-Fekai, Nukututaha (the land that stands
alone), and Faka-hua-motu (the dependent).
"Tulou! Tulou! Tulou! (the form used in thanking a chief for help
in war, implying a request for help in any future emergency).
"May the Lord of Heaven, of His grace, bless the treaty now made!
"That is all.
"I, Tongia,
"King of Niué-Fekai."