THE PACIFIC TRIANGLE
[Illustration: ERUPTION OF VOLCANO ON THE ISLAND OF KYUSHU, JAPAN
To the world a symbol: to Japan a fact]
THE
PACIFIC TRIANGLE
BY
SYDNEY GREENBIE
AUTHOR OF "JAPAN: REAL AND IMAGINARY"
ILLUSTRATED
WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Printed in U. S. A.
TO BARRIE
WHO DID HIS BEST TO
PREVENT THE WRITING OF THIS
BOOK, IN THE HOPE THAT HE MAY
SOME DAY READ IT AND REPENT OF HIS SINS.
PREFACE
This book is an attempt to bring within focus the most outstanding
factors in the Pacific. With the exception of Chapter II, which deals
with the origin of the Polynesian people, there is hardly an incident in
the whole book that has not come within the scope of my own personal
experience. Hence this is essentially a travel narrative. I have
confined myself to the task of interpreting the problems of the Pacific
in the light of the episodes of everyday life. Wherever possible, I have
tried to let the incident speak for itself, and to include in the
picture the average ideals of the various races, together with my own
impressions of them and my own reflections. The field is a tremendous
one. It encompasses the most important regions that lie along the great
avenues of commerce and general intercourse. The Pacific is a great
combination of geographical, ethnological, and political factors that is
extremely diverse in its sources. I have tried to discern within them a
unit of human commonality, as the seeker after truth is bound to do if
his discoveries are to be of any value.
But the result has been an unconventional book. For I have sometimes
been compelled to make unity of time and place subservient to that of
subject matter. Hence the reader may on occasion feel that the book
returns to the same field more than once. That has been unavoidable. The
problems that are found in Hawaii are essentially the same as those in
Samoa, though differing in degree. It has therefore been necessary,
after surveying the whole field in one continuous narrative of my own
journey, to assemble stories, types, and descriptions which illustrate
certain problems, in separate chapters, regardless of their
geographical settings. If the reader bears this in mind he will not be
surprised in Book Two to find himself in Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, or New
Zealand all at once--for issues are always more important than
boundaries.
The plan of the book has been to give the historical approach to the
Pacific and its native races; then to take the reader upon a journey of
over twenty thousand miles around the Pacific. I hope that he will come
away with a clear impression of the immensity of the Ocean, of the
diversity of its natural and human elements, and the splendor and
picturesqueness of its make-up. Out of this review certain problems
emerge, the problems of the relations of native and alien races, of
marriages and divorces, of markets and ideals--problems that affect the
primitive races in their own new place in the world. But over and above
and about these come the issues that involve the more advanced races of
Asia, Australasia, and America--where they impinge upon each other and
where their interests in these minor races center. This is the logic of
the Pacific.
Though the importance of these problems is now obvious to the world, I
feel grateful to those who encouraged me while I still felt myself
almost like a voice crying in the wilderness, on the subject. I
therefore feel specially indebted to the editors of _North American
Review_, _World's Work_ and the _Outlook_, who first published some of
the material here incorporated. But so rapid has been the movement of
events that in no case has it been possible for me to use more than the
essence of the ideas there published. In order to bring them up to date,
they have been completely re-written and made an integral part of this
book. Two or three of the descriptive chapters have also appeared in
_Century Magazine_ and _Harper's Monthly_, for permission to reprint
which I am indebted to them.
There is a further indebtedness which is much more difficult of
acknowledgment. To my wife, Marjorie Barstow, I am under obligation
not only for her steadfast encouragement, but for her judgment,
understanding, and untiring patience, without which my career of
authorship would have been trying indeed.
SYDNEY GREENBIE.
Greensboro, Vermont,
August 4, 1921.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
HISTORICAL AND TRAVEL MATERIAL
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC 3
II THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES 15
III OUR FRONTIER IN THE PACIFIC 30
IV THE SUBLIMATED, SAVAGE FIJIANS 52
V THE SENTIMENTAL SAMOANS 79
VI THE APHELION OF BRITAIN 108
VII ASTRIDE THE EQUATOR 128
VIII THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLANDS 143
IX OUR PEG IN ASIA 158
X BRITAIN'S ROCK IN ASIA 168
XI CHINA'S EUROPEAN CAPITAL 179
XII WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS 192
BOOK TWO
DISCUSSION OF NATIVE PROBLEMS--PERSONAL AND SOCIAL
XIII EXIT THE NOBLE SAVAGE 205
XIV GIVE US OUR VU GODS AGAIN! 222
XV HIS TATTOOED WIFE 237
XVI GIVING HEARTS A NEW CHANCE 254
XVII "THIS LITTLE PIG WENT TO MARKET" 265
BOOK THREE
DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS INVOLVING AUSTRALASIA,
ASIA AND AMERICA
XVIII AUSTRALASIA 281
XIX JAPAN AND ASIA 297
XX AMERICA 312
XXI WHERE THE PROBLEM DOVETAILS 330
XXII AUSTRALIA AND THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE 347
XXIII POLITICAL ALLIES AND FINANCIAL CONSORTS 364
XXIV UNCHARTED SEAS 384
APPENDIX 395
INDEX 397
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Eruption of volcano on the island of Kyushu, Japan _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Map of the Pacific 16
Diamond head near Honolulu 20
The hulk of the German man-of-war, the _Adler_ 20
After seven days of sea--this emerged 21
Hilo, Hawaii 21
Even Fijians are loath to forget the arts of their forefathers 28
In giant canoes Heliolithic immigrants roamed the South Seas 29
There are only a few Chinese women in Hawaii 36
A sage in a china shop at Honolulu 36
Feminine propriety 37
Whoa! Let's have our picture taken 37
Miles away rose the fumes of Kilauea 44
The largest cauldron of molten rock on earth 44
A river of rock pouring out into the sea 45
Whirling eddies of lava undermining frozen lava projections 45
Where the tides turn to stone 48
A blizzard of fuming heat 48
The lake of spouting molten lava 49
A corner of Suva, Fiji 64
Food for a day's gossip 64
The long and the short of it 65
A Hindu patriarch 65
The scowl indicates a complex 68
Instructor of the Fijian constabulary 68
A Fijian Main Street 69
Little Fijians 69
One of the most gifted of Fijian chiefs 76
Cacarini (Katherine), the chief's daughter 76
Fijians dance from the hip up 77
A Fijian wedding 77
The street along the waterfront of Apia, Samoa 96
I thought the village back of Apia, Samoa, was deserted, but
it was only the noon hour 96
Tattooing of the legs is an essential in Samoa 97
Contact with California created this combination of scowl,
bracelets and boy's boots--but Fulaanu beside her was
incorruptible 97
Dunedin, New Zealand 112
Bridges are still luxuries in many places in New Zealand 112
The fiords and sounds of New Zealand 113
Lake Wanaka, New Zealand 113
The S. S. _Aurora_ 128
Mount Cook of the New Zealand Alps in summer 128
Circular quay, Sydney, Australia 129
Monument to Captain Cook 129
One of the oldest Australian residences is now a public
domain 144
The interior of a wealthy sheep station owner's home in
Melbourne 144
Australian blacks in their native element 145
An Australian black in Melbourne 145
Filipino lighters drowsing in the evening shadows 160
The docile water buffalo is used to walking in mud 160
One can throw a brick and hit seven cathedrals in Manila 161
Cool and silent are the mossy streets of the walled city
of Manila 161
In China drinking-water, soap-suds, soup and sewers all find
their source in the same stream 176
Shanghai youngsters putting their heads together to make
us out 176
This old woman is laying down the law to the wild young
things of China 177
China could turn these mud houses into palaces if she
wished--she is rich enough 177
Fujiyama 192
Sea, earth and sky 193
This Hindu has usurped the job of the chieftains' daughters 224
An Indian coolie village 224
A Maori Haka in New Zealand 225
A Maori canoe hurdling race 225
Three views of a Maori woman 240
A group of whites and half-castes in Samoa 241
A ship-load of "picture-brides" arriving at Seattle 241
A Maori woman with her children 241
Beauty is more than skin-deep 256
A half-caste Fijian maiden 257
A full-blooded Fijian maiden 257
Fijian village 272
Little fish went to this market 272
Good luck must attend these traders at the doors of the
cathedrals in Manila 273
A Fijian bazar is a red letter day 273
The mountains are called the Remarkables 284
The Blue Mountains of Australia 284
Australia denuding herself 285
Australia is not all desert and plain 288
People are small amidst Australia's giant tree ferns 289
Japan's first reaction to foreign influence 304
Second stage in Westernization 304
Third stage in Westernization 305
Fourth stage in Westernization 305
Lord Lansdowne and Baron Tadasu Hayashi 352
Prince Ito 352
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 352
Thomas W. Lamont 353
Wellington Koo 353
Yukio Osaki, M.P. and Ex-Minister of Justice 353
BOOK ONE
HISTORICAL AND TRAVEL MATERIAL
CHAPTER I
THE HEART OF THE PACIFIC
_The First Side of The Triangle_
1
... stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Exactly four centuries after the event immortalized by Keats, I
outstripped Balboa's most fantastic dreams by setting out upon the
Pacific and traversing the length and breadth of it. "It is a sight," we
are told, "in beholding which for the first time any man would wish to
be alone." I was. But whereas Balboa's desires were accomplished in
having obtained sight of the Pacific, that achievement only whetted
mine. He said:
You see here, gentlemen and children mine, how our desires are
being accomplished, and the end of our labors. Of that we ought to
be certain, for, as it has turned out true what King Comogre's son
told of this sea to us, who never thought to see it, so I hold for
certain that what he told us of there being incomparable treasures
in it will be fulfilled. God and His blessed Mother who have
assisted us, so that we should arrive here and behold this sea,
will favor us that we may enjoy all that there is in it.
The story of how far he was so assisted is part of the tale of this
book, for in all the wanderings which are the substance of my
accomplishment I can recall having met with but a half-dozen of Balboa's
kinsmen. Instead there are streaming backward and forward across the
Pacific descendants of men Balboa hated and of others of whom he knew
nothing.
Balboa was the first to see the ocean. He had left his men behind just
as they were about to reach the peak from which he viewed it. But he was
not the first to step upon its shores. He sent some of his men down, and
of them one, Alonso Martin, was the first to have that pleasure. Martin
dipped his sword dramatically into the brine and took possession of it
all as far as his mind's eye could reach. Yet to none of the men was
this vast hidden world more than a vision and a hope, and the accidental
name with which Magellan later christened it seems, by virtue of the
motives of gain which dominated these adventurers, anything but
descriptive. To be pacific was not the way of the kings of Castile; nor,
sad to say, is it the way of most of their followers.
What was it that Balboa took possession of in the name of his Castilian
kings? Rather a courageous gamble, to say the least. The dramatic and
fictional possibilities of such wholesale acquisition are illimitable.
In the mid-Pacific were a million or more savage cannibals; in the
far-Pacific, races with civilizations superior to his own. At that very
time China was extending the Great Wall and keeping in repair the Grand
Canal which had been built before Balboa's kings were chiefs. Japan was
already a nation with arts and crafts, and a social state sufficiently
developed to be an aggressive influence in the Oriental world, making
inroads on Korea through piracy. Korea was powerful enough to force
Japan to make amends. Four years after Balboa's discovery the Portuguese
arrived in Canton and opened China for the first time to the European
world. The Dutch were beginning to think of Java. It was hardly Balboa's
plan to make of all these a little gift for his king: his act was but
the customary flourish of discoverers in those days. Men who loved
romance more than they loved reality were ready to wander over the
unknown seas and rake in their discoveries for hire. Balboa, Magellan,
Drake, roamed the seas out of sheer love of wind and sail. Many a man
set forth in search of treasure never to be heard from again; some only
to have their passage guessed by virtue of the signs of white blood in
the faces of some of the natives. For two hundred years haphazard
discoveries and national jealousies confused rather than enlightened the
European world. But late in the eighteenth century, after a considerable
lessening of interest in exploration, Captain James Cook began that
memorable series of voyages which added more definite knowledge to the
geographical and racial make-up of the South Seas than nearly all the
other explorers put together. The growth of the scientific spirit and
the improvement in navigation gave him the necessary impetus. Imbued
with scientific interest, he went to observe the transit of Venus and to
make close researches in the geography of the Pacific. But to George
Vancouver falls the praise due to a constructive interest in the people
whose lands he uncovered. Wherever he went he left fruits and domestic
animals which contributed much to the happiness of the primitives, and
probably laid the foundation for the future colonization of these
scattered islands by Europeans.
Backward and forward across the Pacific through four centuries have
moved the makers of this new Atlantis. First from round Cape Horn,
steering for the setting sun, then from the Australian continent to the
regions of Alaska, these shuttles of the ages have woven their fabric of
the nations. Now the problem is, what is going to be done with it?
I suppose I was really no worse than most people in the matter of
geography when I set forth on my venture. Though the Pacific had lain at
my feet for two years, I seem to have had no definite notions of the
"incomparable treasures" that lay therein. Japan was stored away in my
mind as something to play with. Typee, the cannibal Marquesas--ah! there
was something real and vigorous! Then the South Sea maidens! Ideal
labor conditions in New Zealand! Australia was Botany Bay; the
Philippines, the water cure. Confucius was confusion to me, but
Lao-tsze, the great sage of China--in his philosophy I had found a
meeting-ground for East and West.
But I was sizzling with curiosity. I wanted to bring within my own range
of experience that "unplumbed, salt estranging sea" with its area of
seventy million square miles, equivalent to "three Atlantics, seventy
Mediterraneans," and--aside from the hundreds of millions of people
round its shore--the seventy-odd millions within its bosom. Yet of the
myths, the beliefs, the aspirations of these peoples, even the most
knowing gave contradictory accounts, and curiosity was perforce my
compass.
2
Something in a voyage westward across the Pacific gives one the sense of
a great reunion; it is not a personal experience, but an historic
sensation. One may have few incidents to relate, there may be only an
occasional squall. But in place of events is an abstraction from world
strife, a heading for the beginning of a cycle of existence--for Asia,
the birthplace of the human race. The feeling is that of one making a
tour of the universe which has lasted ten thousand centuries and is but
at the moment nearing completion. For eons the movement has been a
westward one. Races have succumbed to races in this westward reach for
room. Pursuing the retreating glaciers, mankind snatched up each inch of
land released, rushing wildly outward. After the birth of man there was
a split, in which some men went westward and became Europeans, some
eastward and became Asiatics. The Amerindians were the kick of that
human explosion eastward which occurred some time during the Wurm ice
age.
One cannot grasp the significance of the Pacific who crosses it too
swiftly. Every mapped-out route, every guide-book must be laid aside,
and schedules must cease to count. With half a world of water to
traverse, its immensity becomes a reality only when one permits oneself
to be wayward, with every whim a goal.
A fellow-passenger said to me, "My boss has given me two weeks'
vacation."
"Mine has given me a lifetime," I answered.
In that mood I watched the _Lurline_ push its way into the San Francisco
fogs and out through the fog-choked Golden Gate. The fogs stayed with us
a space beyond and were gone, and the wide ocean lay in every direction
roundabout us.
I was bound for Japan by relays. Unable to secure through passage to the
Land of the Rising Sun, I did the next best thing and booked for
Honolulu. There I planned to wait for some steamer with an unused berth
that would take me to Kyoto, Japan, in time to attend the coronation of
the Tenno, the crownless Emperor. After all, Honolulu was not such an
unfavorable spot in which to prepare my soul for the august sight of
emperor-worship on a grand scale, I thought.
And at last I was out upon the bosom of the Pacific, sailing without
time limit or fixed plan, sailing where did Cook and Drake and
Vancouver, and knowing virtually as little of what was about me as did
they. Our ship became the axis round which wheeled the universe, and
progress "a succession of days which is like one day." We went on and
on, and still the circle was true. We moved, yet altered nothing. When
the sky was overcast, the ocean paled in sympathy; when it was bright,
the whitecapped, cool blue surface of the sea abandoned itself to the
light. At night the cleavage between sea and sky was lost. Then we lost
distance, altitude, depth, and even speed. All became illusive--a time
for strong reason.
Then came a storm. The vast disk, the never-shifting circle shrank in
the gathering mist. From the prow of the ship, where I loved most to be,
the world became more lonely. The iron nose of the vessel burrowed into
the blue-green water, thrusting it back out of the way, curling it over
upon a volume of wind which struggled noisily for release. The blue
became deeper, the strangled air assumed a thick gray color and emerged
in a fit of sputtering querulousness. But the ship lunged on, as
unperturbed as the Bhodistava before Mara, the Evil One, sure that he
was becoming Buddha.
We were dipping southward and soon tasted the full flavor of the
luscious tropical air. The ship never more than swayed with the swells.
During the days that followed there was never more than the most
elemental squall. The nights were as clear and balmy as the days. For
seven days we danced and made merry to Hawaiian melodies thrummed by an
Hawaiian orchestra, or screeched by an American talking-machine, or
hammered by a piano-player. The warm air began to play the devil with
our feelings.
Thus seven days passed. I had taken to sleeping out on deck, under the
open sky. The moon was brilliant, the sea as smooth as a pond. I was
awakened by whispered conversation at five o'clock of that last day and
found a group of women huddling close on the forward deck. Their hair
was streaming down their backs, their feet were bare, and their bodies
wrapped in loose kimonos. Some of the officers were pointing to the
southwestern horizon, where a barely perceptible streak of smoke was
rising over the rim of the sea. It was from Kilauea, the volcano on the
island of Hawaii, two hundred miles away.
The air was fresh and balmy as on the day the earth was born. Rolling
cumulous clouds sought to postpone the day by retarding the rising sun.
Lighthouse lights blinked their warnings. Molokai, the leper island,
emerged from the darkness. A blaze of sunlight broke through the clouds
and day was in full swing. And as we neared the island of Oahu, a
full-masted wind-jammer, every strip of sail spread to the breeze, came
gliding toward us from Honolulu.
By noon we were in the open harbor,--a fan-spread of still water. The
_Lurline_ glided on and turned to the right and we were before the
little city of Honolulu. I can still see the young captain on the
bridge, pacing from left to right, watching the water, issuing quiet
directions to the sailor who transmitted them, by indicator, to the
engine-room. We edged up to the piers amid a profusion of greetings from
shore and appeals for coins from brown-skinned youngsters who could a
moment later be seen chasing them in the water far below the surface.
This, then, is progress. In 1778, Captain Cook was murdered by these
islanders. To-day they "grovel" in the seas for petty cash. One hundred
and forty years! Seven days!
3
But Hawaii was only my half-way house. I was still reaching out for
Japan. According to the advice of steamship agencies I might have waited
seven years before any opportunity for getting there would come my way.
At twelve o'clock one day I learned that the _Niagara_ was in port. She
was to sail for the Antipodes at two. By two I was one of her
passengers. Hadn't "my boss" given me a lifetime's vacation?
The world before me was an unknown quantity, as it doubtless is to at
least all but one in a million of the inhabitants of our globe. My
ticket said Sydney, Australia. How long would it take us? Two weeks?
What should we see en route? Two worlds? Here, in one single journey I
should cut a straight line across the routes of Magellan, Drake, Cook,
and into those of Tasman,--all the great navigators of the last four
hundred years. Here, then, I was to trace the steps of Melville, of
Stevenson, of Jack London,--largely with the personal recommendations of
Jack,--and of one then still unfamed, Frederick O'Brien. All the courage
in the face of the unknown, all the conflicts between the world
civilizations in their various stages of development, all the dreams of
romance, of future welfare and achievement, would unfold in my progress
southward and fall into two much-talked-of and little-understood
divisions--East and West. I was to discover for myself what it was that
Balboa and his like had taken possession of in their grandiloquent
fashion and were ready to defend against all comers. Yet the flag at the
mast was not Balboa's flag, nor Tasman's, and the passengers among whom
fate had wheeled me were, with one exception, neither Spanish nor Dutch,
but British. As long as I moved from San Francisco westward and as long
as I remained in Honolulu, I was, as far as customs and people were
concerned, in America. But from the moment I considered striking off
diagonally across the South Seas in the direction of the Antarctic I was
thrown among Britons. The clerk in the steamship office was Canadian,
the steamer was British, the passengers were British, and the cool,
casual way in which the _Niagara_ kicked herself off from the pier and
slipped out into the harbor was confirmation of a certain cleavage. For
there was none of the gaiety which accompanies the arrival and departure
of American vessels,--no music, no serpentines, no cheering. We just
took to our screws and the open sea as though glad to get away from an
uncordial "week-end." This was a British liner that was to cut across
the equator, to climb over the vast ridge of earth and dip down into the
Antipodes. We were to leave America far behind. Henceforward, with but
the single exception of tiny Pago Pago, Samoa, we could not enter an
American owned port,--and on this route would miss even that one. And
now that mandates have become the vogue, there is in all that world of
water hardly an important spot that does not fly the Union Jack. The
sense of private ownership in all that could be surveyed gave to the
bearing of the passengers an air of dignity which was not always latent
in the individual.
Meanwhile the ship pressed steadily on, coldly indifferent, fearless and
emotionless. We were nearing the equator, and the days in its
neighborhood steeped us all in drooping feebleness. Climate gets us all,
ultimately. We forgot one another beneath the heavy weight of
nothingness which hangs over that equatorial world. Sleep within my
cabin was impossible, so I had the steward bring me a mattress out on
deck. At midnight a heavy wind turned the air suddenly so cold that I
had to secure a blanket. The wind howling round the mast and the
flapping of the canvas sounded like a tragedy without human agency. The
night was pitch-black and the blackness was intensified by intermittent
streaks of lightning. But there was no rain.
It was Tuesday, yet the next day was Thursday. Where Wednesday went I
have never been able to find out. We had arrived at the point in the
Pacific where one day swallows up another and leaves none. The European
world, measuring the earth from its own vantage-point, had allotted no
day for the mid-Pacific, so that instead of arriving at Suva, Fiji, in
proper sequence of time, we were both a day late and a day ahead. We had
cut across the 180th meridian, where time is dovetailed.
That afternoon we sighted land for the first time in seven days. Alofa
Islands, pale blue, smooth-edged, were a living lie to reality. A
peculiar feeling came over me in passing without touching terra firma.
It was like the longing for the sun after days and days of gray, the
longing for rain in the desert. It was the longing for the return to the
actualities of life after days on the unvariable sea. And presently I
was in Fiji, and the _Niagara_ sailed on without me. Once again I
changed my course to wander among the South Seas and leave Sydney for
the future.
Yet even on land he who has been brought up on a continent cannot escape
a feeling of isolation, the consciousness of being completely surrounded
by water. After you have had the deep beneath you for seven days, and
again seven days, you begin to feel that even the islands are but
floating in the same fluid. The fact that you cannot go anywhere without
riding the waves, and that it takes two whole days by steamer to get
from Fiji to Samoa, and four from Fiji to New Zealand, and then four
again between New Zealand and Australia, a water-consciousness takes
possession of you, and the islands become mere ledges upon which you
rest occasionally. Something of the joy of being a bird on the wing is
the experience of the traveler in the Pacific seas.
Imagine, then, my delight and surprise, early one morning on my return
trip from Samoa to Fiji, to find the _Talune_ sidling up to an unknown
isle considerably off our course. It was, we were told, the island of
Niuafoou, and was visited every month or so to deliver and take off the
mails. It was a chill morning. Everything was blue with morning cold.
The waves dashed in desperation against the cliffs. Glad was I that we
were not run ashore, for I have never yet been able to see the virtue in
ice-cold sea-water. Fancy our consternation when down slid a native,
head first, from the bluff half a mile away into the water, as we slide
into a swimming-pool. For a moment he was lost behind the tossing
crests. Then we saw him coming slowly toward us, resting on a plank and
paddling with his free hand, seeming like a tremendous water-spider.
Tied to a stick like to a mast was a tightly wrapped bundle of mail. The
_Talune_ kept swerving like an impatient horse, waiting for the arrival
of that amphibian. When he came alongside he dropped the little bundle
into a bucket let down to him at the end of a rope, and kicked himself
away. A second man arrived with a packet,--the parcels-post man of
Niuafoou. A third came merely as an inspector. Meanwhile, on the bluff
the whole community had gathered for the irregular lunar event.
Or, days later, after my second call at Fiji as the ship pressed
steadily on toward Auckland, New Zealand, we passed the island of Mbenga
where dwell the mystic fire-walkers so vividly portrayed by Basil
Thomson in his "South Sea Yarns." I wished that I had had a "callous" on
my habits in cleanliness to protect me from the unpleasantnesses of the
vessel, as have those Fijian fire-walkers on their soles, then I should
have been happier. Their soles are half an inch thick. I should have
needed a callous at least two inches thick to endure the _Talune_ more
than the six days it took us to get from Samoa to Auckland.
Early in the morning of the fourth day of our journey from Suva, Fiji,
we passed the Great Barrier Island, which stands fifty miles from
Auckland. We crept down the Hauraki Gulf, passed Little Barrier Island,
and entered Waitemata Harbor, where we dropped anchor, awaiting the
doctor's examination. Just from the tropics, I was taken by surprise to
find the wind biting and chill as we went farther south, and here at the
gates of Auckland the coat I had unnecessarily carried on my arm for
months became most welcome. Before I could adjust myself to the new
landing-place, I had to readjust my mind to another fact which had never
been any vital part of my psychology,--that henceforth the farther south
I should go the colder it would feel, and that though it was the sixth
of November, the longer I remained the warmer it would become. In the
presence of such phenomena, losing a thirteenth day of one's month while
crossing the 180th meridian was a commonplace. The habits of a short
lifetime told me to put on my coat, for winter was coming. But here I
had come amongst queer New Zealanders who told me to unbutton it, even
to shed it, for spring, they assured me, was not far behind.
And then for the first time in months I felt the spirit of the
landlubber work its way into my consciousness again. I had cut a
diagonal line of 6,000 miles across a mysterious, immeasurable sea, and
my reason, my heart and my body longed for respite from its benumbing
influence. I had seen enough to last me a long time. I fairly ached for
retirement inland, for sight of a cool, still lake, for contact with
snow-capped mountain peaks. More than all else, I yearned for the cold,
for the scent of snow, for the snug satisfaction of self-generated
warmth. My soul and my body seemed seared and scorched by the blazing
tropical sun under the wide, unsheltered seas. Later, when I should be
"well" again, I thought, I would risk the climb up over the equator, the
curve of the world that lies so close to the sun.
And now that I was settled I had time to reflect on all I had seen. I
had cut a diagonal line through the heart of the Pacific, and had seen
in succession the various types of native races--the Hawaiians, the
Fijians, the Samoans--while all about me were the Maories. So I reviewed
and classified my memories before I started north on another diagonal
course which led me among the transplanted white peoples of Australia
and Asia. Yet one question preceded all others: whence came these
Pacific peoples and when? The answer to that must be given before
specific descriptions of the South Sea Islanders can be clear.