Natural history of the valley—Golden lizards—Tameness of the
birds—Mosquitoes—Flies—Dogs—A solitary cat—The climate—The cocoa-nut
tree—Singular modes of climbing it—An agile young chief—Fearlessness of
the children—Too-too and the cocoa-nut tree—The birds of the valley.
There were some curious-looking dogs in the valley. Dogs!—big, hairless
rats rather; all with smooth, shining, speckled hides—fat sides, and
very disagreeable faces. Whence could they have come? That they were
not the indigenous production of the region, I am firmly convinced.
Indeed, they seemed aware of their being interlopers, looking fairly
ashamed, and always trying to hide themselves in some dark corner. It
was plain enough they did not feel at home in the vale—that they wished
themselves well out of it, and back to the ugly country from which they
must have come.
Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked nothing
better than to have been the death of every one of them. In fact, on
one occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine crusade to Mehevi
but the benevolent king would not consent to it. He heard me very
patiently; but when I had finished, shook his head, and told me in
confidence, that they were “taboo.”
As for the animal that made the fortune of my lord mayor Whittington, I
shall never forget the day that I was lying in the house about noon,
everybody else being fast asleep; and happening to raise my eyes, met
those of a big black spectral cat, which sat erect in the doorway,
looking at me with its frightful goggling green orbs, like one of those
monstrous imps that tormented some of the olden saints! I am one of
those unfortunate persons, to whom the sight of these animals is at any
time an insufferable annoyance.
Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected
apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When I had
a little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started up;
the cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house in
pursuit; but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever saw one in
the valley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It is just possible
that it might have escaped from one of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in
vain to seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of
them had seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to
me to this day.
Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was none
which I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-hued
species of lizard. It measured perhaps five inches from head to tail,
and was most gracefully proportioned. Numbers of those creatures were
to be seen basking in the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses,
and multitudes at all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as
they ran frolicking between the spears of grass, or raced in troops up
and down the tall shafts of the cocoa-nut trees. But the remarkable
beauty of these little animals and their lively ways were not their
only claims upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible
to fear. Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady
place during the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with
them. If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair:
when I tried to frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would
turn for protection to the very hand that attacked it.
The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see one perched
upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced towards it, it did
not fly away immediately, but waited quietly looking at you, until you
could almost touch it, and then took wing slowly, less alarmed at your
presence, it would seem, than desirous of removing itself from your
path. Had salt been less scarce in the valley than it was, this was the
very place to have gone birding with it.
I remember that once, on an uninhabited island of the Gallipagos, a
bird alighted on my outstretched arm, while its mate chirped from an
adjoining tree. Its tameness, far from shocking me, as a similar
occurrence did Selkirk, imparted to me the most exquisite thrill of
delight I ever experienced; and with somewhat of the same pleasure did
I afterwards behold the birds and lizards of the valley show their
confidence in the kindliness of man.
Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have entailed upon
some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introduction
among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers—the
mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands, and at two or three of the Society
group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise
ere long to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting,
buzz, and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by
incessantly exasperating the natives, materially obstruct the
benevolent labours of the missionaries.
From this grievous visitation, however, the Typees are as yet wholly
exempt; but its place is unfortunately in some degree supplied by the
occasional presence of a minute species of fly, which, without
stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The
tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the
fearless confidence of this insect. He will perch upon one of your
eye-lashes, and go to roost there, if you do not disturb him, or force
his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you
almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one
occasion I was so inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were
hovering around me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted
into the open compartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the
sensation was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor
creatures, being enveloped in inner darkness, must in their
consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been precipitated into
the gulf beneath. At any rate, though I afterwards charitably held my
mouth open for at least five minutes, with a view of affording egress
to the stragglers, none of them ever availed themselves of the
opportunity.
There are no wild animals of any kind on the island, unless it be
decided that the natives themselves are such. The mountains and the
interior present to the eye nothing but silent solitudes, unbroken by
the roar of beasts of prey, and enlivened by few tokens even of minute
animated existence. There are no venomous reptiles, and no snakes of
any description to be found in any of the valleys.
In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no topic of
conversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes. The rainy
season, it is true, brings frequent showers, but they are intermitting
and refreshing. When an islander, bound on some expedition, rises from
his couch in the morning, he is never solicitous to peep out and see
how the sky looks, or ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is
always sure of a “fine day,” and the promise of a few genial showers he
hails with pleasure. There is never any of that “remarkable weather” on
the islands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America,
and still continues to call forth the wondering conversational
exclamations of its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of
those eccentric meteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In
the valley of Typee ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable
by sudden frosts, nor would picnic parties be deferred on account of
inauspicious snowstorms: for there day follows day in one unvarying
round of summer and sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical
month of June just melting into July.
It is this genial climate which causes the cocoa-nuts to flourish as
they do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil
of the Marquesas, and borne aloft on a stately column more than a
hundred feet from the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible
to the simple natives. Indeed, the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft,
without a single limb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in
mounting it, presents an obstacle only to be overcome by the surprising
agility and ingenuity of the islanders. It might be supposed that their
indolence would lead them patiently to await the period when the
ripened nuts, slowly parting from their stems, fall one by one to the
ground. This certainly would be the case, were it not that the young
fruit, encased in a soft green husk, with the incipient meat adhering
in a jelly-like pellicle to its sides, and containing a bumper of the
most delicious nectar, is what they chiefly prize. They have at least
twenty different terms to express as many progressive stages in the
growth of the nut. Many of them reject the fruit altogether except at a
particular period of its growth, which, incredible as it may appear,
they seemed to me to be able to ascertain within an hour or two. Others
are still more capricious in their tastes; and after gathering together
a heap of the nuts of all ages, and ingeniously tapping them, will
first sip from one and then from another, as fastidiously as some
delicate wine-bibber experimenting, glass in hand, among his dusty
demijohns of different vintages.
Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their comrades,
and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of walking up the
trunk of the cocoa-nut trees which to me seemed little less than
miraculous; and when looking at them in the act, I experienced that
curious perplexity a child feels when he beholds a fly moving feet
uppermost along a ceiling.
I will endeavour to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble young
chief, sometimes performed this feat for my particular gratification;
but his preliminary performances must also be recorded. Upon my
signifying my desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some
particular tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden
attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of
the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange
emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous
resignation to my will, and then, looking wistfully up to the tufted
top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating
his arms, as though endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground
where he stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks
to the earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair;
and then, starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his head,
raises both hands, like a schoolboy about to catch a falling ball.
After continuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation that
the fruit was going to be tossed down to him by some good spirit in the
tree-top, he turns wildly round in another fit of despair, and scampers
off to the distance of thirty or forty yards. Here he remains awhile,
eyeing the tree, the very picture of misery; but the next moment,
receiving, as it were, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards
it, and clasping both arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little
above the other, he presses the soles of his feet close together
against the tree, extending his legs from it until they are nearly
horizontal, and his body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over
hand and foot after foot, he rises from the earth with steady rapidity,
and almost before you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and
embowered nest of nuts, and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to
the ground.
This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the trunk
declines considerably from the perpendicular. This, however, is almost
always the case; some of the perfectly straight shafts of the trees
leaning at an angle of thirty degrees.
The less active among the men, and many of the children of the valley,
have another method of climbing. They take a broad and stout piece of
bark, and secure either end of it to their ankles: so that when the
feet thus confined are extended apart, a space of little more than
twelve inches is left between them. This contrivance greatly
facilitates the act of climbing. The band pressed against the tree, and
closely embracing it, yields a pretty firm support; while with the arms
clasped about the trunk, and at regular intervals sustaining the body,
the feet are drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and a corresponding
elevation of the hands immediately succeeds. In this way I have seen
little children, scarcely five years of age, fearlessly climbing the
slender pole of a young cocoa-nut tree, and while hanging perhaps fifty
feet from the ground, receiving the plaudits of their parents beneath,
who clapped their hands, and encouraged them to mount still higher.
What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions, would
the nervous mothers of America and England say to a similar display of
hardihood in any of their children? The Lacedemonian nation might have
approved of it, but most modern dames would have gone into hysterics at
the sight.
At the top of the cocoa-nut tree the numerous branches, radiating on
all sides from a common centre, form a sort of green and waving basket,
between the leaflets of which you just discern the nuts thickly
clustering together, and on the loftier trees looking no bigger from
the ground than bunches of grapes. I remember one adventurous little
fellow—Too-Too was the rascal’s name—who had built himself a sort of
aërial baby-house in the picturesque tuft of a tree adjoining Marheyo’s
habitation. He used to spend hours there,—rustling among the branches,
and shouting with delight every time the strong gusts of wind, rushing
down from the mountain side, swayed to and fro the tall and flexible
column on which he was perched. Whenever I heard Too-Too’s musical
voice sounding strangely to the ear from so great a height, and beheld
him peeping down upon me from out his leafy covert, he always recalled
to my mind Dibdin’s lines—
There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To look out for the
life of poor Jack.
Birds—bright and beautiful birds—fly over the valley of Typee. You see
them perched aloft among the immovable boughs of the majestic
bread-fruit trees, or gently swaying on the elastic branches of the
Omoo; skimming over the palmetto-thatching of the bamboo huts; passing
like spirits on the wing through the shadows of the grove, and
sometimes descending into the bosom of the valley in gleaming flights
from the mountains. Their plumage is purple and azure, crimson and
white, black and gold; with bills of every tint;—bright bloody-red, jet
black, and ivory white; and their eyes are bright and sparkling; they
go sailing through the air in starry throngs; but, alas! the spell of
dumbness is upon them all—there is not a single warbler in the valley!
I know not why it was, but the sight of these birds, generally the
ministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy. As in their
dumb beauty they hovered by me whilst I was walking, or looked down
upon me with steady curious eyes from out the foliage, I was almost
inclined to fancy that they knew they were gazing upon a stranger, and
that they commiserated his fate.