Hints For A Full Length Of Samoa
My original intention to touch at the Kingsmill Chain, or the countries
adjacent, was greatly strengthened by thus encountering Samoa; and the
more I had to do with my Belisarius, the more I was pleased with him.
Nor could I avoid congratulating myself, upon having fallen in with a
hero, who in various ways, could not fail of proving exceedingly
useful.
Like any man of mark, Samoa best speaks for himself; but we may as well
convey some idea of his person. Though manly enough, nay, an obelisk in
stature, the savage was far from being sentimentally prepossessing. Be
not alarmed; but he wore his knife in the lobe of his dexter ear,
which, by constant elongation almost drooped upon his shoulder. A mode
of sheathing it exceedingly handy, and far less brigandish than the
Highlander’s dagger concealed in his leggins.
But it was the mother of Samoa, who at a still earlier day had
punctured him through and through in still another direction. The
middle cartilage of his nose was slightly pendent, peaked, and Gothic,
and perforated with a hole; in which, like a Newfoundland dog carrying
a cane, Samoa sported a trinket: a well polished nail.
In other respects he was equally a coxcomb. In his style of tattooing,
for instance, which seemed rather incomplete; his marks embracing but a
vertical half of his person, from crown to sole; the other side being
free from the slightest stain. Thus clapped together, as it were, he
looked like a union of the unmatched moieties of two distinct beings;
and your fancy was lost in conjecturing, where roamed the absent ones.
When he turned round upon you suddenly, you thought you saw some one
else, not him whom you had been regarding before.
But there was one feature in Samoa beyond the reach of the innovations
of art:—his eye; which in civilized man or savage, ever shines in the
head, just as it shone at birth. Truly, our eyes are miraculous things.
But alas, that in so many instances, these divine organs should be mere
lenses inserted into the socket, as glasses in spectacle rims.
But my Islander had a soul in his eye; looking out upon you there, like
somebody in him. What an eye, to be sure! At times, brilliantly
changeful as opal; in anger, glowing like steel at white heat.
Belisarius, be it remembered, had but very recently lost an arm. But
you would have thought he had been born without it; so Lord Nelson-
like and cavalierly did he sport the honorable stump.
But no more of Samoa; only this: that his name had been given him by a
sea-captain; to whom it had been suggested by the native designation of
the islands to which he belonged; the Saviian or Samoan group,
otherwise known as the Navigator Islands. The island of Upolua, one of
that cluster, claiming the special honor of his birth, as Corsica does
Napoleon’s, we shall occasionally hereafter speak of Samoa as the
Upoluan; by which title he most loved to be called.
It is ever ungallant to pass over a lady. But what shall be said of
Annatoo? As I live, I can make no pleasing portrait of the dame; for as
in most ugly subjects, flattering would but make the matter worse.
Furthermore, unalleviated ugliness should ever go unpainted, as
something unnecessary to duplicate. But the only ugliness is that of
the heart, seen through the face. And though beauty be obvious, the
only loveliness is invisible.