VAVAU
I need not detail all the moves in a game of hide-and-seek played in
a South Sea capital with private agents for pieces. It lasted a full
six weeks, and like other hard-fought games, it is pleasanter in the
retrospect than it was in the playing. There were pauses in the game,
and in one of these I steamed off to Vavau, carrying with me Fatafehi,
His Majesty's father, to choose the fort and the coaling-station.
Fatafehi, Tui Belehake--"Two-belly," as the blue-jackets irreverently
called him--is a lineal descendant of the gods, and too exalted a
personage to sit upon an earthly throne. So while his son, inheriting
through his mother Fujipala, the late king's granddaughter, wears the
crown (fashioned by a Sydney jeweller out of a metal that was charged
for as gold, but apt to develop verdigris in damp weather), he is
content to discharge the humbler office of Minister of Lands combined
with that of Speaker of the Parliament. To assist in determining the
boundaries of the coaling-station, he brought with him a body-servant
and a young man armed with a theodolite, an instrument which proved of
great value to us, though not in the way intended by its makers. By his
charming manners and his hearty laugh he endeared himself to all on
board, though he could not speak a word of any language but his own,
and I was not always at hand to interpret. He lived nominally in the
captain's cabin, but though he ate heartily and was quite at his ease,
he showed the instinct of an old sailor in carrying up his blanket to
the deck, where he was found in the morning asleep in a canvas chair.
Having a curiosity to visit Falcon Island, we did not take the direct
route to Vavau. Early in 1896 Falcon Reef, then a patch of coral awash
at low water, suddenly broke into eruption and cast up an island of
pumice stone more than 100 feet high. Mr. Shirley Baker, who watched
the eruption from a schooner, described it to me as a terrific
spectacle, as indeed it must have been, for the sea had access to the
crater, and was flung aloft in explosions of steam. As soon as the mass
was cool enough to stand upon, the Tongan ensign was hoisted upon it,
and the new island became a portion of King George's dominions. It did
not swell his revenues, for, when I passed it four years later, it had
shrunk to less than half its original size, and every roller that broke
upon its shores brought down a landslip of pumice which covered the
surface of the sea for some distance. H.M.S. _Porpoise_ had examined it
in 1899, and had reported it as a reef barely awash, and her officers
were anxious to see whether there had been any change since their last
visit. We sighted it at three o'clock in the afternoon. The sea was
breaking heavily, and as we drew near we were astonished to find a
black hump protruding nine feet above the waves. It was impossible to
make a closer examination in the boats, but the navigating lieutenant
was satisfied that the restless island was emerging again from the sea.
Early next morning we steamed into Neiafu Harbour. Something unusual
about the vegetation on the outer island had struck us as we came in,
but we were not prepared for the scene of desolation that met us as we
swung round Utulei Point to the anchorage. The centre of a terrific
cyclone had struck the island on April 2nd, 1900, just a week before
our arrival. Scarce a house was left standing; the trees were naked;
the graceful palms were mere ragged broomsticks stuck aslant in the
earth. In the steamy calm the water of the harbour was like oil, and it
was impossible to picture the wild fury that had beset the place but
seven days past. We landed, half deafened by the reverberating echo
of the saluting guns, to pay our official visit to George Finau, now
promoted to be governor over the people whose hereditary lord he is.
Abnormally thick-set when I knew him, he was now elephantine in girth,
and if his twelve-year-old son maintains his present rate of growth,
his little finger will be thicker than his father's loins.
The formal reception being over, we were free to stroll through the
town. The ruin was complete; the government offices were an untidy
heap of lumber; the great native church, the last work of King George
of pious memory, had collapsed; its mighty roof, unshipped from the
supporting posts, but still held together by its sinnet lashings,
lay careened like a stranded hull--the pulpit was overturned, the
flooring ripped from end to end. Never again, the king told me, would
such a house be built again, for the degenerates of these days prefer
corrugated iron. Already the Roman Catholics were pointing to their
concrete church, still standing like an island among the general
wreckage, as a proof of Divine warranty, a little tempered perhaps by
reason of a gaping rent in the tower. The people were living in the
open air, crawling into the cover of their ruined houses to shelter
from the rain. Poor souls! they bore their misfortunes with a light
heart, though the crop of orange trees, from which they get their
living, were uprooted, and the cocoanuts would not recover for two
years. Every boat in the island was busy bringing food from the less
stricken villages, and the men were saving something from the wreck by
turning the fallen cocoanuts into copra.
Next day we set forth in the ship's boats to survey the German
coaling-station in the bight of the harbour. The shore is here a coral
reef, upheaved about fifteen feet above the sea. The soil is shallow,
but, like all limestone formations, very productive, and covered with
plantations and cocoanut trees. On the further side was the open sea,
for this part of the harbour is a mere breakwater, tapering away to a
boat passage in the bight of the harbour, where the land is only two
furlongs across. The Germans had done themselves handsomely, and had
allowed no concern for the welfare of the natives to interfere with their
wishes. Starting from the boat passage, they had annexed a generous
strip of country for a distance of half a mile, regardless of the fact that
many families, who had never been consulted, were robbed of all their
planting land at a stroke of the pen. These families had continued
placidly to cultivate their plantations, and they were now sitting silent
in the road to hear their fate. The coal, the sole evidence of their
dilemma, was now a hillock of crumbling, chocolate-coloured gravel,
overgrown with creepers and long unrecognisable as fuel.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH BUILT BY KING GEORGE I.
Wrecked by the cyclone]
[Illustration: THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES AT VAVAU
Wrecked by the cyclone. A female convict is clearing away
the wreckage
To face page 186
]
We chained the boundary with a sounding-line, the owners cheerfully
pointing it out without any attempt to diminish the area, which proved
to contain no less than thirty acres of good planting land. This being
far more than we wanted, I saw an opportunity for securing a site for
the fort as well. Calling them together in an open place, I announced
that though England had succeeded to all the German concession, yet
she would restore to them six-sevenths of this good land, and in
return would only ask for a little plot of bad land in another part of
the harbour. Then we chained out a rectangular piece, with a frontage
of 200 yards, 100 yards deep on one side and 140 at the other, and the
natives showed their delight by clearing the boundary and planting
lines of cocoanuts to mark it. The ship's carpenter made huge broad
arrows in cement at the corners on the sea face, and erected blocks of
stone, similarly marked, at the inner corners.
Meanwhile the navigating officer was taking angles with a sextant on
the sea front, and Unga, Fatafehi's secretary, was following him about
with his theodolite like a faithful dog. So pathetic was his anxiety
that his ancient instrument should be put to use that the lieutenant
at last took pity on him, and set it up. The first glance showed him
that the metal cap had rusted to the lens, and when he wrenched it off
a cry of agony was wrung from Unga, as who should say, "Now you've done
it!" For years he had been pretending to survey the boundaries in land
disputes with the cap on, and the erection of the instrument had always
sufficed to settle the dispute, and here was an Englishman, albeit
possessing the occult knowledge of a naval lieutenant, ruthlessly
destroying the _mana_ of his weapon for ever. But when he was shown
that he could look through the telescope, which had formerly only
presented darkness to his eye, and his instructor even promised to
give him lessons in the science of angles, his delight knew no bounds.
For days afterwards the lieutenant and his disciple were familiar
spectacles in the chart-room, and the former, who came to be a little
bored with his pupil's ardour, admitted that he had shown amazing
aptitude, and that he could take rough angles and calculate area with
approximate accuracy.
It was not easy to select the site for the protecting fort owing to
the wealth of choice, but eventually we found what we wanted. Fatafehi
undertook to "square" the owner, the descendant of a Portuguese
deserter from a ship, who had found favour with the Finau Ulukalala
of Mariner's time. So far from receiving the idea of a British fort
on Tongan territory with coolness, the Tongans seemed to be pleased
with it, especially when I hinted that the garrison might consist of
Tongans under the command of a British officer. They are a race of
warriors, condemned for the present to live upon the traditions of
their ancestors' exploits, and soldiering is to them the most noble of
occupations; indeed, no commander could ask for more promising material
for troops, for alone among South Sea races they had evolved the idea
of discipline, and preferred to capture entrenched positions by direct
assault.
The remainder of our visit was given to sight-seeing. I was anxious
to revisit the Hunga cave, twice-famed by Mariner and Byron. In 1890
a westerly swell had prevented me from diving into it, but this time
Finau had promised to provide guides from the best divers in the
island, and to put no obstacles in my way if the weather made the
adventure possible. But to my disappointment a westerly swell again set
in, and the guides backed his declaration by refusing to risk their own
skins. I had to admit to myself that it would have been a poor ending
to my trip to be sent home in bandages, after defying the advice of the
guides, especially as I had been warned by Mr. H. J. Marshall, R.N.,
who was a midshipman on H.M.S. _Calliope_ when Captain Aylen explored
the cave in 1852, that the feat was difficult even in calm weather.
Captain Sir J. Everard Home being anxious to have the cave explored in
order to test William Mariner's story, selected Mr. J. F. R. Aylen,
then a Master's Assistant, now a Post-Captain retired, as being the
best diver in the ship. He was taken to the indicated position of the
cave's mouth in the galley, and furnished with a lead line and two
natives as guides. There was no sea on, but the dive is a long one--one
fathom down and five fathoms along the passage before it is possible to
rise into the cave. Aylen was, I believe, the first white man to enter
the cave since Mariner, and, being something of a draughtsman, he made
a sketch of the interior, which was afterwards turned into a picture by
an artist in Sydney. The return dive was not so successful. The great
difficulty in diving out of these submarine caves is that, your face
being downwards, you are deceived by the reflected light into coming
up too soon. Captain Aylen scratched his back so severely with the
stalactites that the wounds did not heal for two months.
With Finau for guide we rode out to see the famous fortress of Feletoa,
at whose ramparts the most stirring of Mariner's adventures[11] were
enacted. Those who have read this classic in the literature of travel
will remember that when Toeumu revolted against her nephew, Finau
Ulukalala, in 1810, the entire population of the island was entrenched
at Feletoa in the largest and strongest fortress ever built in Tonga.
Finau besieged the place with an army of 5,000 men and artillery taken
from the captured ship _Port-au-Prince_, but, after an ineffective
siege of many months, was obliged to make terms with the enemy. The
place lies four miles from Neiafu, on a deep bay communicating with
the same harbour. Descending from the modern village which lies just
outside the landward defences, we came upon the outer rampart at a spot
about two furlongs from the beach and 100 feet above it. We traced the
triple line of ditches and earthworks for 200 yards, to a spot near the
angle, where they made a semicircular sweep to enclose a fissure in
the earth before trending inland. This rift was the secret of the long
resistance to Finau's army. The story runs that, a few years before the
siege, a man weeding yams in the gardens above noticed that his dog
disappeared and returned with a dripping coat. Fresh water is too rare
in Vavau for this to be allowed to pass, and the next day the dog was
followed. He vanished into a hole in the coral rock, and after several
minutes, returned dripping as before.
Torches were procured and a man scrambled down. The passage
gradually widened until, at a depth of forty or fifty feet, it became a
large cave full of water of unknown depth. It was this discovery
that led to the choice of Feletoa as the site for the fortress that was
to contain the entire population of the island. We explored the cave,
and found that the water was clear, but slightly brackish. Probably
it rises and falls with the tide, and the whole island, like Niué,
contains similar reservoirs of fresh water beneath its crust. Mariner
says that Finau had the ramparts levelled with the ground, but, to
judge by the works still remaining, his commands must have been but
grudgingly obeyed, for it would not take much to put the place into a
state of defence again.
[Illustration: THE LAND-LOCKED HARBOUR OF VAVAU
_From a photograph by J. Martin, Auckland_
On the right is the flat-topped hill of Talau; in the distance Hunga
Island and Mariner's Cave; the entrance stretches away beyond it
To face page 192
]
Surveying the fort, even in its dismantled and overgrown condition,
we could well believe that it had a most imposing appearance. The
land-locked inlet, with its vista of hazy islands to seaward and its
brilliant reflections, broken here and there by light puffs of wind,
must have been a fit setting for the lofty triple rampart alive with
warriors in their war-harness. Of their Homeric deeds in the great
siege you may read in the pages of Dr. Martin, who, if he wrote no
epic, contrived at least to lose nothing of the romance in William
Mariner's story.
[11] _Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands._ By JOHN MARTIN, M.D.