The road from Taahauku to Atuona skirted the north-westerly side of the
anchorage, somewhat high up, edged, and sometimes shaded, by the splendid
flowers of the _flamboyant_—its English name I do not know. At the turn
of the hand, Atuona came in view: a long beach, a heavy and loud breach
of surf, a shore-side village scattered among trees, and the guttered
mountains drawing near on both sides above a narrow and rich ravine. Its
infamous repute perhaps affected me; but I thought it the loveliest, and
by far the most ominous and gloomy, spot on earth. Beautiful it surely
was; and even more salubrious. The healthfulness of the whole group is
amazing; that of Atuona almost in the nature of a miracle. In Atuona, a
village planted in a shore-side marsh, the houses standing everywhere
intermingled with the pools of a taro-garden, we find every condition of
tropical danger and discomfort; and yet there are not even mosquitoes—not
even the hateful day-fly of Nuka-hiva—and fever, and its concomitant, the
island fe’efe’e, {122} are unknown.
This is the chief station of the French on the man-eating isle of
Hiva-oa. The sergeant of gendarmerie enjoys the style of the
vice-resident, and hoists the French colours over a quite extensive
compound. A Chinaman, a waif from the plantation, keeps a restaurant in
the rear quarters of the village; and the mission is well represented by
the sister’s school and Brother Michel’s church. Father Orens, a
wonderful octogenarian, his frame scarce bowed, the fire of his eye
undimmed, has lived, and trembled, and suffered in this place since 1843.
Again and again, when Moipu had made coco-brandy, he has been driven from
his house into the woods. ‘A mouse that dwelt in a cat’s ear’ had a more
easy resting-place; and yet I have never seen a man that bore less mark
of years. He must show us the church, still decorated with the bishop’s
artless ornaments of paper—the last work of industrious old hands, and
the last earthly amusement of a man that was much of a hero. In the
sacristy we must see his sacred vessels, and, in particular, a vestment
which was a ‘_vraie curiosité_,’ because it had been given by a gendarme.
To the Protestant there is always something embarrassing in the eagerness
with which grown and holy men regard these trifles; but it was touching
and pretty to see Orens, his aged eyes shining in his head, display his
sacred treasures.
_August_ 26.—The vale behind the village, narrowing swiftly to a mere
ravine, was choked with profitable trees. A river gushed in the midst.
Overhead, the tall coco-palms made a primary covering; above that, from
one wall of the mountain to another, the ravine was roofed with cloud; so
that we moved below, amid teeming vegetation, in a covered house of heat.
On either hand, at every hundred yards, instead of the houseless,
disembowelling paepaes of Nuka-hiva, populous houses turned out their
inhabitants to cry ‘Kaoha!’ to the passers-by. The road, too, was busy:
strings of girls, fair and foul, as in less favoured countries; men
bearing breadfruit; the sisters, with a little guard of pupils; a fellow
bestriding a horse—passed and greeted us continually; and now it was a
Chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us ‘Good-day’
in excellent English; and a little farther on it would be some natives
who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast of mummy-apple, and
entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tin case. With all this fine
plenty of men and fruit, death is at work here also. The population,
according to the highest estimate, does not exceed six hundred in the
whole vale of Atuona; and yet, when I once chanced to put the question,
Brother Michel counted up ten whom he knew to be sick beyond recovery.
It was here, too, that I could at last gratify my curiosity with the
sight of a native house in the very article of dissolution. It had
fallen flat along the paepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains and
the mites contended against it; what remained seemed sound enough, but
much was gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects consumed
the walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain ate into
them like vitriol.
A little ahead of us, a young gentleman, very well tattooed, and dressed
in a pair of white trousers and a flannel shirt, had been marching
unconcernedly. Of a sudden, without apparent cause, he turned back, took
us in possession, and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river’s
edge. There, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit
down: the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery
enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought
us a cocoa-nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve:
the nut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious gift, and
the stick—in the simplicity of his vanity—to harvest premature praise.
Only one section was yet carved, although the whole was pencil-marked in
lengths; and when I proposed to buy it, Poni (for that was the artist’s
name) recoiled in horror. But I was not to be moved, and simply refused
restitution, for I had long wondered why a people who displayed, in their
tattooing, so great a gift of arabesque invention, should display it
nowhere else. Here, at last, I had found something of the same talent in
another medium; and I held the incompleteness, in these days of
world-wide brummagem, for a happy mark of authenticity. Neither my
reasons nor my purpose had I the means of making clear to Poni; I could
only hold on to the stick, and bid the artist follow me to the
gendarmerie, where I should find interpreters and money; but we gave him,
in the meanwhile, a boat-call in return for his sandal-wood. As he came
behind us down the vale he sounded upon this continually. And
continually, from the wayside houses, there poured forth little groups of
girls in crimson, or of men in white. And to these must Poni pass the
news of who the strangers were, of what they had been doing, of why it
was that Poni had a boat-whistle; and of why he was now being haled to
the vice-residency, uncertain whether to be punished or rewarded,
uncertain whether he had lost a stick or made a bargain, but hopeful on
the whole, and in the meanwhile highly consoled by the boat-whistle.
Whereupon he would tear himself away from this particular group of
inquirers, and once more we would hear the shrill call in our wake.
_August_ 27.—I made a more extended circuit in the vale with Brother
Michel. We were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to these rude
paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which I found myself
no less agreeable than the scenes through which I passed. We mounted at
first by a steep grade along the summit of one of those twisted spurs
that, from a distance, mark out provinces of sun and shade upon the
mountain-side. The ground fell away on either hand with an extreme
declivity. From either hand, out of profound ravines, mounted the song
of falling water and the smoke of household fires. Here and there the
hills of foliage would divide, and our eye would plunge down upon one of
these deep-nested habitations. And still, high in front, arose the
precipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemed that
scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags of a human
road where it seemed that not a goat could scramble. And in truth, for
all the labour that it cost, the road is regarded even by the Marquesans
as impassable; they will not risk a horse on that ascent; and those who
lie to the westward come and go in their canoes. I never knew a hill to
lose so little on a near approach: a consequence, I must suppose, of its
surprising steepness. When we turned about, I was amazed to behold so
deep a view behind, and so high a shoulder of blue sea, crowned by the
whale-like island of Motane. And yet the wall of mountain had not
visibly dwindled, and I could even have fancied, as I raised my eyes to
measure it, that it loomed higher than before.
We struck now into covert paths, crossed and heard more near at hand the
bickering of the streams, and tasted the coolness of those recesses where
the houses stood. The birds sang about us as we descended. All along
our path my guide was being hailed by voices: ‘Mikaël—Kaoha, Mikaël!’
From the doorstep, from the cotton-patch, or out of the deep grove of
island-chestnuts, these friendly cries arose, and were cheerily answered
as we passed. In a sharp angle of a glen, on a rushing brook and under
fathoms of cool foliage, we struck a house upon a well-built paepae, the
fire brightly burning under the popoi-shed against the evening meal; and
here the cries became a chorus, and the house folk, running out, obliged
us to dismount and breathe. It seemed a numerous family: we saw eight at
least; and one of these honoured me with a particular attention. This
was the mother, a woman naked to the waist, of an aged countenance, but
with hair still copious and black, and breasts still erect and youthful.
On our arrival I could see she remarked me, but instead of offering any
greeting, disappeared at once into the bush. Thence she returned with
two crimson flowers. ‘Good-bye!’ was her salutation, uttered not without
coquetry; and as she said it she pressed the flowers into my
hand—‘Good-bye! I speak Inglis.’ It was from a whaler-man, who (she
informed me) was ‘a plenty good chap,’ that she had learned my language;
and I could not but think how handsome she must have been in these times
of her youth, and could not but guess that some memories of the dandy
whaler-man prompted her attentions to myself. Nor could I refrain from
wondering what had befallen her lover; in the rain and mire of what
sea-ports he had tramped since then; in what close and garish
drinking-dens had found his pleasure; and in the ward of what infirmary
dreamed his last of the Marquesas. But she, the more fortunate, lived on
in her green island. The talk, in this lost house upon the mountains,
ran chiefly upon Mapiao and his visits to the _Casco_: the news of which
had probably gone abroad by then to all the island, so that there was no
paepae in Hiva-oa where they did not make the subject of excited comment.
Not much beyond we came upon a high place in the foot of the ravine. Two
roads divided it, and met in the midst. Save for this intersection the
amphitheatre was strangely perfect, and had a certain ruder air of things
Roman. Depths of foliage and the bulk of the mountain kept it in a
grateful shadow. On the benches several young folk sat clustered or
apart. One of these, a girl perhaps fourteen years of age, buxom and
comely, caught the eye of Brother Michel. Why was she not at school?—she
was done with school now. What was she doing here?—she lived here now.
Why so?—no answer but a deepening blush. There was no severity in
Brother Michel’s manner; the girl’s own confusion told her story. ‘_Elle
a honte_,’ was the missionary’s comment, as we rode away. Near by in the
stream, a grown girl was bathing naked in a goyle between two
stepping-stones; and it amused me to see with what alacrity and real
alarm she bounded on her many-coloured under-clothes. Even in these
daughters of cannibals shame was eloquent.
It is in Hiva-oa, owing to the inveterate cannibalism of the natives,
that local beliefs have been most rudely trodden underfoot. It was here
that three religious chiefs were set under a bridge, and the women of the
valley made to defile over their heads upon the road-way: the poor,
dishonoured fellows sitting there (all observers agree) with streaming
tears. Not only was one road driven across the high place, but two roads
intersected in its midst. There is no reason to suppose that the last
was done of purpose, and perhaps it was impossible entirely to avoid the
numerous sacred places of the islands. But these things are not done
without result. I have spoken already of the regard of Marquesans for
the dead, making (as it does) so strange a contrast with their unconcern
for death. Early on this day’s ride, for instance, we encountered a
petty chief, who inquired (of course) where we were going, and suggested
by way of amendment. ‘Why do you not rather show him the cemetery?’ I
saw it; it was but newly opened, the third within eight years. They are
great builders here in Hiva-oa; I saw in my ride paepaes that no European
dry-stone mason could have equalled, the black volcanic stones were laid
so justly, the corners were so precise, the levels so true; but the
retaining-wall of the new graveyard stood apart, and seemed to be a work
of love. The sentiment of honour for the dead is therefore not extinct.
And yet observe the consequence of violently countering men’s opinions.
Of the four prisoners in Atuona gaol, three were of course thieves; the
fourth was there for sacrilege. He had levelled up a piece of the
graveyard—to give a feast upon, as he informed the court—and declared he
had no thought of doing wrong. Why should he? He had been forced at the
point of the bayonet to destroy the sacred places of his own piety; when
he had recoiled from the task, he had been jeered at for a superstitious
fool. And now it is supposed he will respect our European superstitions
as by second nature.