The port—the mart, the civil and religious capital of these rude
islands—is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a
precipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva. It was midwinter when we came
thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant. Now the
wind blew squally from the land down gaps of splintered precipice; now,
between the sentinel islets of the entry, it came in gusts from seaward.
Heavy and dark clouds impended on the summits; the rain roared and
ceased; the scuppers of the mountain gushed; and the next day we would
see the sides of the amphitheatre bearded with white falls. Along the
beach the town shows a thin file of houses, mostly white, and all
ensconced in the foliage of an avenue of green puraos; a pier gives
access from the sea across the belt of breakers; to the eastward there
stands, on a projecting bushy hill, the old fort which is now the
calaboose, or prison; eastward still, alone in a garden, the Residency
flies the colours of France. Just off Calaboose Hill, the tiny
Government schooner rides almost permanently at anchor, marks eight bells
in the morning (there or thereabout) with the unfurling of her flag, and
salutes the setting sun with the report of a musket.
Here dwell together, and share the comforts of a club (which may be
enumerated as a billiard-board, absinthe, a map of the world on
Mercator’s projection, and one of the most agreeable verandahs in the
tropics), a handful of whites of varying nationality, mostly French
officials, German and Scottish merchant clerks, and the agents of the
opium monopoly. There are besides three tavern-keepers, the shrewd Scot
who runs the cotton gin-mill, two white ladies, and a sprinkling of
people ‘on the beach’—a South Sea expression for which there is no exact
equivalent. It is a pleasant society, and a hospitable. But one man,
who was often to be seen seated on the logs at the pier-head, merits a
word for the singularity of his history and appearance. Long ago, it
seems, he fell in love with a native lady, a High Chiefess in Ua-pu.
She, on being approached, declared she could never marry a man who was
untattooed; it looked so naked; whereupon, with some greatness of soul,
our hero put himself in the hands of the Tahukus, and, with still
greater, persevered until the process was complete. He had certainly to
bear a great expense, for the Tahuku will not work without reward; and
certainly exquisite pain. Kooamua, high chief as he was, and one of the
old school, was only part tattooed; he could not, he told us with lively
pantomime, endure the torture to an end. Our enamoured countryman was
more resolved; he was tattooed from head to foot in the most approved
methods of the art; and at last presented himself before his mistress a
new man. The fickle fair one could never behold him from that day except
with laughter. For my part, I could never see the man without a kind of
admiration; of him it might be said, if ever of any, that he had loved
not wisely, but too well.
The Residency stands by itself, Calaboose Hill screening it from the
fringe of town along the further bay. The house is commodious, with wide
verandahs; all day it stands open, back and front, and the trade blows
copiously over its bare floors. On a week-day the garden offers a scene
of most untropical animation, half a dozen convicts toiling there
cheerfully with spade and barrow, and touching hats and smiling to the
visitor like old attached family servants. On Sunday these are gone, and
nothing to be seen but dogs of all ranks and sizes peacefully slumbering
in the shady grounds; for the dogs of Tai-o-hae are very courtly-minded,
and make the seat of Government their promenade and place of siesta. In
front and beyond, a strip of green down loses itself in a low wood of
many species of acacia; and deep in the wood a ruinous wall encloses the
cemetery of the Europeans. English and Scottish sleep there, and
Scandinavians, and French _maîtres de manœuvres_ and _maîtres ouvriers_:
mingling alien dust. Back in the woods, perhaps, the blackbird, or (as
they call him there) the island nightingale, will be singing home
strains; and the ceaseless requiem of the surf hangs on the ear. I have
never seen a resting-place more quiet; but it was a long thought how far
these sleepers had all travelled, and from what diverse homes they had
set forth, to lie here in the end together.
On the summit of its promontory hill, the calaboose stands all day with
doors and window-shutters open to the trade. On my first visit a dog was
the only guardian visible. He, indeed, rose with an attitude so menacing
that I was glad to lay hands on an old barrel-hoop; and I think the
weapon must have been familiar, for the champion instantly retreated, and
as I wandered round the court and through the building, I could see him,
with a couple of companions, humbly dodging me about the corners. The
prisoners’ dormitory was a spacious, airy room, devoid of any furniture;
its whitewashed walls covered with inscriptions in Marquesan and rude
drawings: one of the pier, not badly done; one of a murder; several of
French soldiers in uniform. There was one legend in French: ‘_Je n’est_’
(sic) ‘_pas le sou_.’ From this noontide quietude it must not be
supposed the prison was untenanted; the calaboose at Tai-o-hae does a
good business. But some of its occupants were gardening at the
Residency, and the rest were probably at work upon the streets, as free
as our scavengers at home, although not so industrious. On the approach
of evening they would be called in like children from play; and the
harbour-master (who is also the jailer) would go through the form of
locking them up until six the next morning. Should a prisoner have any
call in town, whether of pleasure or affairs, he has but to unhook the
window-shutters; and if he is back again, and the shutter decently
replaced, by the hour of call on the morrow, he may have met the
harbour-master in the avenue, and there will be no complaint, far less
any punishment. But this is not all. The charming French Resident, M.
Delaruelle, carried me one day to the calaboose on an official visit. In
the green court, a very ragged gentleman, his legs deformed with the
island elephantiasis, saluted us smiling. ‘One of our political
prisoners—an insurgent from Raiatea,’ said the Resident; and then to the
jailer: ‘I thought I had ordered him a new pair of trousers.’ Meanwhile
no other convict was to be seen—‘_Eh bien_,’ said the Resident, ‘_où sont
vos prisonniers_?’ ‘_Monsieur le Résident_,’ replied the jailer,
saluting with soldierly formality, ‘_comme c’est jour de fête_, _je les
ai laissé aller à la chasse_.’ They were all upon the mountains hunting
goats! Presently we came to the quarters of the women, likewise
deserted—‘_Où sont vos bonnes femmes_?’ asked the Resident; and the
jailer cheerfully responded: ‘_Je crois_, _Monsieur le Résident_,
_qu’elles sont allées quelquepart faire une visite_.’ It had been the
design of M. Delaruelle, who was much in love with the whimsicalities of
his small realm, to elicit something comical; but not even he expected
anything so perfect as the last. To complete the picture of convict life
in Tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that these criminals draw a salary
as regularly as the President of the Republic. Ten sous a day is their
hire. Thus they have money, food, shelter, clothing, and, I was about to
write, their liberty. The French are certainly a good-natured people,
and make easy masters. They are besides inclined to view the Marquesans
with an eye of humorous indulgence. ‘They are dying, poor devils!’ said
M. Delaruelle: ‘the main thing is to let them die in peace.’ And it was
not only well said, but I believe expressed the general thought. Yet
there is another element to be considered; for these convicts are not
merely useful, they are almost essential to the French existence. With a
people incurably idle, dispirited by what can only be called endemic
pestilence, and inflamed with ill-feeling against their new masters,
crime and convict labour are a godsend to the Government.
Theft is practically the sole crime. Originally petty pilferers, the men
of Tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strong-boxes. Hundreds
of dollars have been taken at a time; though, with that redeeming
moderation so common in Polynesian theft, the Marquesan burglar will
always take a part and leave a part, sharing (so to speak) with the
proprietor. If it be Chilian coin—the island currency—he will escape; if
the sum is in gold, French silver, or bank-notes, the police wait until
the money begins to come in circulation, and then easily pick out their
man. And now comes the shameful part. In plain English, the prisoner is
tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the money.
To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the
Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberies are carried on in
the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise,
and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still
insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures in his solitary dungeon;
conceive how he longs to confess, become a full-fledged convict, and be
allowed to sleep beside his comrades. While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief
was under prevention. He had entered a house about eight in the morning,
forced a trunk, and stolen eleven hundred francs; and now, under the
horrors of darkness, solitude, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he
was reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil. From one cache,
which he had already pointed out, three hundred francs had been
recovered, and it was expected that he would presently disgorge the rest.
This would be ugly enough if it were all; but I am bound to say, because
it is a matter the French should set at rest, that worse is continually
hinted. I heard that one man was kept six days with his arms bound
backward round a barrel; and it is the universal report that every
gendarme in the South Seas is equipped with something in the nature of a
thumbscrew. I do not know this. I never had the face to ask any of the
gendarmes—pleasant, intelligent, and kindly fellows—with whom I have been
intimate, and whose hospitality I have enjoyed; and perhaps the tale
reposes (as I hope it does) on a misconstruction of that ingenious
cat’s-cradle with which the French agent of police so readily secures a
prisoner. But whether physical or moral, torture is certainly employed;
and by a barbarous injustice, the state of accusation (in which a man may
very well be innocently placed) is positively painful; the state of
conviction (in which all are supposed guilty) is comparatively free, and
positively pleasant. Perhaps worse still,—not only the accused, but
sometimes his wife, his mistress, or his friend, is subjected to the same
hardships. I was admiring, in the tapu system, the ingenuity of native
methods of detection; there is not much to admire in those of the French,
and to lock up a timid child in a dark room, and, if he proved obstinate,
lock up his sister in the next, is neither novel nor humane.
The main occasion of these thefts is the new vice of opium-eating. ‘Here
nobody ever works, and all eat opium,’ said a gendarme; and Ah Fu knew a
woman who ate a dollar’s worth in a day. The successful thief will give
a handful of money to each of his friends, a dress to a woman, pass an
evening in one of the taverns of Tai-o-hae, during which he treats all
comers, produce a big lump of opium, and retire to the bush to eat and
sleep it off. A trader, who did not sell opium, confessed to me that he
was at his wit’s end. ‘I do not sell it, but others do,’ said he. ‘The
natives only work to buy it; if they walk over to me to sell their
cotton, they have just to walk over to some one else to buy their opium
with my money. And why should they be at the bother of two walks? There
is no use talking,’ he added—‘opium is the currency of this country.’
The man under prevention during my stay at Tai-o-hae lost patience while
the Chinese opium-seller was being examined in his presence. ‘Of course
he sold me opium!’ he broke out; ‘all the Chinese here sell opium. It
was only to buy opium that I stole; it is only to buy opium that anybody
steals. And what you ought to do is to let no opium come here, and no
Chinamen.’ This is precisely what is done in Samoa by a native
Government; but the French have bound their own hands, and for forty
thousand francs sold native subjects to crime and death. This horrid
traffic may be said to have sprung up by accident. It was Captain Hart
who had the misfortune to be the means of beginning it, at a time when
his plantations flourished in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty in
keeping Chinese coolies. To-day the plantations are practically deserted
and the Chinese gone; but in the meanwhile the natives have learned the
vice, the patent brings in a round sum, and the needy Government at
Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets. Of course, the patentee
is supposed to sell to Chinamen alone; equally of course, no one could
afford to pay forty thousand francs for the privilege of supplying a
scattered handful of Chinese; and every one knows the truth, and all are
ashamed of it. French officials shake their heads when opium is
mentioned; and the agents of the farmer blush for their employment.
Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones; as a subject of
the British crown, I am an unwilling shareholder in the largest opium
business under heaven. But the British case is highly complicated; it
implies the livelihood of millions; and must be reformed, when it can be
reformed at all, with prudence. This French business, on the other hand,
is a nostrum and a mere excrescence. No native industry was to be
encouraged: the poison is solemnly imported. No native habit was to be
considered: the vice has been gratuitously introduced. And no creature
profits, save the Government at Papeete—the not very enviable gentlemen
who pay them, and the Chinese underlings who do the dirty work.