THE MARQUESAS TODAY
It is a strange anomaly that the Marquesan, by long odds the fastest
disappearing of the Polynesian races, is made up of individuals of
incomparably finer physique than those of any other of the islands of
the South Pacific. Of a dozen natives picked at random from the beach
of Taio-haie, there would probably be not over three or four who would
not show more or less of his dark head above the end of a six-foot
tape, and the breadth and muscling of each would be in proportion. The
women are likewise of good size and figure, and, when undisfigured
with tattooing, of considerable beauty as well. Both sexes accomplish
prodigious feats of walking, swimming and rowing, and both invariably
bear up remarkably under hardship and privation such as that incident
to being cast away to sea for weeks in an open boat.
As a matter of fact, the startling decrease in the population of the
Marquesan group, except for occasional epidemics, is due to scarcity
of births and a lack of vitality in the children rather than to an
abnormal number of deaths among the adults. This condition is largely
traceable to the existence of a number of more or less active forms of
blood disease introduced by the whites of the Pacific whaling fleet
of half a century ago, and to certain vicious practices in connection
with the prevention of child-bearing prevalent in the over-populous
days of the group. Cannibalism and intertribal wars have frequently
been assigned as potent factors in the decimation, but it is notable
that neither has had such effect in the Solomon or New Hebridean
groups, where both are prevalent today.
The early explorers estimated the population of the island of Nukahiva
at from 30,000 to 40,000. In 1804 there was believed to be not over
18,000 on the island, and in 1836 but 8,000. A French census in 1856
enumerated but 2,960, which number had fallen to 800 by 1880. In
1889 +Stevenson found Taio-haie a lively village with a club, barracks,
hotel, numerous stores and a considerable colony of French officials;
Hatiheu and Anaho were villages of upwards of a hundred natives each.
At the time of our visit in the _Lurline_ there remained in Taio-haie
but three French officials, a single German trader, three or four
missionaries and a native population just short of ninety. The villages
of Hatiheu and Anaho had but a few over a hundred inhabitants between
them.
In the veins of the Nukahivan of today course two strains of foreign
blood of widely diverse origin. During the latter part of the 16th, and
for most of the 17th century, the island was a rendezvous for a large
colony of buccaneers who had chosen that location for the advantages
it gave them in preying upon the Spanish galleons plying between Peru
and the Isthmus of Panama, as well as in raiding settlements on the
intervening coast of South America. These pirates, after some years of
fighting, brought the natives of the Taio-haie and Hatiheu districts
into a state of complete subjection, while their relations with the
tribes of the interior appeared to have been in the nature of an
armed neutrality. The subject natives were employed at sea as sailors
and boatmen, and on land as gardeners and herdsmen. The cattle,
pigs and goats brought to the island by the freebooters must have
been the progenitors of the wild animals of these species which
abound there today. With the natives of the interior some trading
for food was carried on at times when the drought on the coast
made short crops of coconuts, breadfruit and bananas.
When the streams of Incan gold from Peru began to run low and
buccaneering became unprofitable as a consequence, the Nukahivan
pirate colonies gradually changed back to native villages. After the
last of the strangers had died, their descendants, through
intermarriage with pure-blooded natives, reverted little by little to
the predominating type, until the evidences of the blood of white
men in their veins survived only in straighter hair and features,
harder eyes, a sharper and more uncertain temper and an increased
arrogance. They were a handsomer people physically, and a keener
one mentally than the original Marquesan, but withal a race whose
morals were in rags and tatters.
For some decades in the middle of the last century Nukahiva was the
main base of a large portion of the Pacific whaling fleet. Ships spent
months at a time at Taio-haie, refitting and reprovisioning, and the
island gained many new and undesirable inhabitants through desertions
from their crews. The worst epidemic of smallpox ever recorded in
the South Pacific was started in Nukahiva by a maroon from a whaler,
and the present-day prevalence of blood and skin disease is directly
traceable to similar sources. The women were carried off to the ends
of the earth on the whalers and few indeed of them ever found their
way back; for the good of future generations it would have been
better had none of them done so.
The moral laxity of the Marquesan of the present day is undoubtedly a
legacy of these two occupations of the principal island by the lowest
of the sea's riff-raff, pirates and whalers. In Nukahiva chastity
is quite unknown to any class, and a century of work on the part of
the French missionaries has left little mark upon the morals of the
people. They are prone to throw themselves at every opportunity into
the most unlicensed debauchery, and they know no law save that of the
appetites. The feasts of the present generation of Nukahivans--aside
from cannibalism, which is still practised whenever the chances for
escaping detection are favourable--are howling orgies of two and three
days' duration, their riotous excesses uninterrupted even by intervals
of singing and dancing, as in Samoa, Tahiti and Fiji. The song and the
dance, which represent to the Polynesian about all that religion, music
and the drama combined do to us, have died out in the Marquesas even
faster than the people.
The Marquesans of a century ago were the most completely and
artistically tattooed people in the Pacific, and the practice is
carried on among them to a certain extent even today. The really fine
pieces of work, however, such as the famous right leg of the late
Queen Vaekehu over which Stevenson waxed so enthusiastic, are
confined entirely to the very old, and, what with wrinkles, deformities
and the wear and tear of time, these have lost most of their original
sharpness of colour and outline. None of the new generation appears
to have the fortitude to endure the exquisite pain incident to having
a whole limb picked out in a network of geometric design or the face
barred and circled like a coarse spider's web.
Women are rarely tattooed at all now, and most of the young men are
satisfied with a broad band of solid black--not unlike a highwayman's
mask in effect--which reaches across the face from ear to ear, giving
to their never overly-mild countenances an expression of amazing
ferocity. That the art, and a certain pride connected with it, are not
yet lost to the Marquesans, however, was amusingly shown by an
incident which occurred the day after _Lurline's_ arrival in Taio-haie.
On this occasion, in testing some newly-opened shells, we fired ten
or a dozen shots in rapid succession from the yacht's brass signal
cannon. At the first report a bevy of Marquesan damsels, who had
come off to sell sandalwood and shark-tooth necklaces, stampeded
to their canoes and could not be induced to return until all activity
in the firing line had ceased.
Then they all clambered gleefully aboard again, and one of them so
far forgot herself as to sit down on the deck and lean languidly back
with her plump brown shoulder against the sizzling hot breech of the
signal gun. That was the last languid movement she made for some
time. Came the sharp hiss of singed flesh and then, with the scream
of a frightened wildcat, the girl cleared the low rail as though thrown
from a catapult, swam half a hundred feet under water, to go lunging
straight off for the shore the instant her head rose above the surface.
Now it chanced that across the breech of our little cannon was engraved
the name "LURLINE," picked out in ornamental scrolleries, and beneath
it, in rich reposé, the figure of a puffy dolphin in the act of gulping
down a buxom mermaid. Such of this bas-relief as had come in contact
with the fair Marquesienne's shoulder left its mark, which striking
design was no sooner seen by the tribal tattooist than he needs must
perpetuate what he feared, no doubt, was but an ephemeral impression.
So fishbone needles and black gum were hastily brought into play, and
several days later, when the inflammation had subsided sufficiently to
enable her to be about, the proud and grateful young beauty brought
the decoration off for us to see. "RLINE" we read in wobbly reversed
letters, and beneath, floundering desperately across a shoulder blade,
a stub-tailed mermaid could be discerned in the act of disappearing
into the impressionistic but unmistakable head of a dolphin. A half
dozen of the now distinguished young person's girl friends
accompanied her, and every one of the envious minxes persisted in
embracing, leaning against and sitting upon that now cool but still
ornamental signal-gun breech in anxious endeavours to get patterns
of their own to take back to the village tattooist.
But the cunningest picture ever executed upon the body of any
Marquesan, living or dead, pales to insignificance when compared to
the amazing hieroglyphic record depicted upon the skin of a living
Marqueso-American, John Hilyard. Readers of Stevenson may recall the
tattooed man, who was the first resident of Taio-haie to discover the
appearance of the strange schooner in the introductory chapter of
"The Wreckers." A bit of the history of that strange character is also
hinted at, I believe, but, according to the present-day gossip of the
"beach" of Taio-haie, it is all wrong. For the real story I am indebted
to our friend, McGrath, the trader of Hatiheu, who once nursed Hilyard
through a spell of fever and attained to more of that queer outcast's
confidence than any one else on the island. From Hilyard himself--now
a man of about seventy, with his grotesquely figured body fully
clothed and as much as possible of his face obscured with a bushy
beard,--absolutely nothing can be learned, and I was considered to have
done remarkably well in holding him during a ten-minute discussion of
shark baits. I will outline here in a single paragraph a story which,
measured in pangs of soul and body, would tax the compass of a modern
novel adequately to depict.
Deserting from the American whaler, _Nancy Dawson_, when that ship was
careened at Anaho in the 60's for calking, was a raw youth of twenty,
who had run away from his home in a California mining camp and signed
on in San Francisco. White men were scarce in the Marquesas, and
after working for a while in a trading store in Taio-haie, he shortly
became supercargo on a trading schooner, and at length the owner of a
concession and boats of his own. It was at the height of his prosperity
that he met and fell captive to the charms of Mariva, who was reputed
beautiful and undoubtedly was coquettish, as the sequel shows. She
accepted Hilyard's presents, but told him that, while she liked his
personality well enough, she detested the sight of his white skin. Let
the village tattooer remedy that and perhaps--The love lorn wretch was
off to put himself under the needle before she had finished. Mariva
dropped in occasionally upon the session of torture which followed
and, now by criticism, now by approval, urged on the flagging artists
to renewed effort. When geometric whorls and bands and parallelograms
were exhausted, Mariva herself dipped a dainty forefinger in the
black _kuki_-soot gum and began improvising designs. "That broad chest
was made by nature to support a clump of bananas." "What could be
daintier than some fat pigs gorging on mangoes in the hollow of that
back?" She and an invited bevy of friends sang _himines_ to drown
Hilyard's groans while he was conscious, and when he fainted with the
pain and lay in a stupor they seized spare needles and tried their own
hands at tattooing. At the end of the second day, with designs two and
three deep all over the body of the unconscious trader, they desisted,
less from exhaustion than from a lack of further skin that would take
an impression. Hilyard lay in a swoon all night, and in the morning
was carried to the mission house with a raging fever. That night the
faithless Mariva eloped with a half-caste missionary preacher, took
possession of one of Hilyard's schooners, sailed it to the Paumotos,
where they ultimately set up in trading on their own account and, as
far as any one knows, lived happily ever afterwards. That Hilyard did
not die from blood-poisoning was miraculous. As it was he hovered
between life and death for a month, finally to pass from the kindly
care of the missionaries so broken in mind and body that he was
never again able to return to his trading business. The honest
French Residente disposed of Hilyard's interests for a sum sufficient,
when placed in a bank at Tahiti, to give the unlucky victim of love's
madness enough to live comfortably upon, and for the last forty
years he has done just that and nothing more, just existed--an
object of scorn to the natives and of pity to the whites--upon the
"beach" of Taio-haie.
Scenically the Marquesas are incomparably more beautiful than any of
the other island groups of the Pacific, Hawaii not excepted. It is
usual to hear the traveller who has covered Polynesia by the steamer
route speak in similar terms of the Society Islands--especially Moorea
and Tahiti--Samoa and Fiji, whichever may have chanced to tickle his
fancy, quite losing sight of the fact that the route of his boat has
been laid out along the lines of commerce irrespective of scenery. Not
one steamer--save an occasional gunboat--goes to the Marquesas in a
decade, the mail of the islands being carried to and from Tahiti every
three or four months in a trading schooner. In the last twenty years
scarce that number of strangers have visited the group, and a dozen or
more of these came on the only three yachts that have ever found their
way there. How little, therefore, the average South Sea tourist really
knows of these islands may readily be seen.
The rock walls and cliffs of Moorea would be lost in the shadows of
the great 4,000-foot spires that tower above the bay of Hatiheu;
the 600-foot fall of Faatua, in Tahiti, might be shut from sight in
the spray of the 2,000-foot fall of the Typee in Nukahiva; and the
great cliff of Bora-Bora, the creeper-tapestried walls of the bay of
Pago-Pago and the great gorge of the upper Rewa, in Fiji, could be
hidden away in corners of the stupendous Atouna valley of Hiva-oa
so effectually that they would pass unnoticed.
In the matter of riotous tropical growth, the Marquesas, being nearer
the Line than any other of the South Sea islands that may lay claim to
scenic beauty, have also all the best of the comparison. Nukahiva is
an almost impenetrable jungle of lantana, burao, acacia, banana, guava
and scores of other trees and bushes, nearly all of them flowering and
fruit bearing. Indigenous to the island is the _cassi_ plant, a thick
shrub which covers patches of the lower hills in dense masses and
which blossoms out in tiny yellow balls of almost solid pollen. The
latter has a perfume of most penetrating sweetness, and in flowering
time is blown by the Trades many leagues to the leeward of the island.
This is the odour which I mentioned that we noted in the air while the
yacht was still a hundred miles or more from land. Beating into the
incomparable bay of Hatiheu at night with this perfumed breeze sweeping
the deck, the wake a comet of golden-green light and the surf bursting
in vivid spurts of phosphorescence along the silver-bright band of the
beach, is to anticipate the approach to the mystical Islands of the
Blest.
At a number of widely-separated points in the South Pacific--notably
at Easter Island, Tahiti and Kusaie, of the Caroline group--are to
be found great images of stone, the ruins of huge temples and other
evidences of the existence of prehistoric races who, at least as
builders, were far in advance of the Polynesian of today. French
scientists had noted that in the Marquesas some of the abandoned
house-foundations or _pai-pais_, contained far larger blocks of stone
than any of those of later construction, but not until very recently
was it known that there were works in the group not unworthy of
comparison with the stone gods of Easter Island.
Just previous to our visit to Nukahiva, our friend McGrath, the trader
of Hatiheu, while following up a wounded boar in the Typee Valley,
chanced on an ancient Marquesan "Olympus," containing nine large stone
images in a comparatively good state of preservation. Though this most
interesting discovery lies within 300 yards of the main trail up the
Typee Valley, no native on the island, either by actual knowledge or
through tradition, has been able to shed light on its origin, purpose
or probable age.
McGrath conducted our party to his "Goddery," as he facetiously called
it, when we were crossing the island to pay a visit to the Queen of
Hatiheu, and the several films which I exposed in a driving rainstorm
resulted in what are undoubtedly the first photographs of these strange
Marquesan images. The ancient shrine--for such it must have been--is
situated on a terrace in the steeply-sloping side hill, and though
the underbrush thins out somewhat in its immediate vicinity, the
overarching bows of _maupé_ and _hau_ trees form so dense a screen that
the heavens are completely obscured. Though it was full noonday when
we visited the place, the light--partly, no doubt, on account of the
rain--was as dim as that of an old cathedral, and my films, which were
exposed four minutes each, would have turned out much better with ten.
The images, which had been set at regular intervals around an open
stone-paved court, were from six to eight feet in height and averaged
about three feet in thickness. We estimated each to contain from forty
to sixty cubic feet of hard basaltic stone, the weight of which must
have been several tons. As raising so great a weight up the sixty or
seventy per cent. incline from the valley would have been almost
impossible, and as no outcroppings of stone of similar nature appeared
nearby, we were forced to the conclusion that the material for the
images must have been quarried out at some point higher up the mountain
and laboriously lowered to the terrace prepared for them.
[Illustration: "ALL OF THE IMAGES WERE COVERED
WITH MOSS"]
[Illustration: "A HARDENED OLD OFFENDER WHO
PREFERRED WHITE MAN TO NATIVE MEAT"]
All of the images were covered with an inch or more of solid moss, and
on one which I photographed it was necessary to scrape some of this
away to bring out the features. The figures were much alike in design,
and, in a general way, of a not unremote resemblance to the Buddhas of
the ancient Javan temples. Eleven of them were still in their original
positions; one was blocked half way in its fall by the trunk of a _hau_
tree, and one was prostrate and overgrown with moss and creepers. A
search will undoubtedly reveal others now entirely covered with earth
and undergrowth, as there are several unoccupied niches still remaining.
That this shrine is of considerable age is evidenced by the fact that a
_hau_ tree, three feet in diameter, has forced apart the heavy paving
stones and is growing in the middle of the court. Trees of even greater
size are growing out of the ruins of a small nearby building, which
might once have been the foundation of the domicile of the attendant
priests. Some of the roughly squared rocks in the foundation of the
shrine are approximately three by three by ten feet in dimension, and
must have taken a small army of men to move and set in place.
The Marquesas are the only islands of the eastern groups of the South
Pacific where cannibalism has not long since ceased. This does not mean
that one is likely to be pounced on and eaten as soon as he sets foot
ashore--as I must frankly admit we all feared when we first heard of
the fate of the late pilots of Taio-haie--but only that under certain
favourable conditions, when there is small chance of its being brought
to the attention of the French authorities, this barbarity is still
resorted to. The French and the missionaries have been active in
suppressing cannibalism and its attendant rites, but, principally on
account of certain religious significances which appear to attach to
it, the practice persists in bobbing up perennially. The dead in their
tribal fights are still eaten when the opportunity offers, but only one
white man and a Chinaman (the two pilots were half-castes) are known
to have been eaten in the last decade.
Accuse a Marquesan of being a cannibal, and he will ordinarily deny
the soft impeachment much after the manner of a school girl taxed with
being a flirt. Some will brazen it out, however, and of such was a
hardened old offender who explained to the _Lurline_ forecastle one
night that, of the various classes of "long-pig," he preferred white
man to native because the meat of the latter was saltier and of a more
pronounced flavour. Chinaman he had never eaten, he said, but--and
here he cast an appraising look to where our recently shipped cook was
shuddering at the door of the galley--he was going to try one at his
first opportunity. The terrified Si-ah would not even go ashore to do
the marketing during the remainder of our stay in Taio-haie.
The practice of cannibalism undoubtedly originated in the
over-populated days of the island when, in the seasons of famine, the
bodies of those killed in the intertribal raids were eaten by the
survivors to escape starvation. Its survival into a period when the
islands produce food a thousand-fold in excess of consumption, and in
the face of the active opposition of the French, can be due only to
certain superstitious attributes, such as the belief that the strength
of a dead foe enters into the body of him who eats the flesh.
Human flesh is eaten in the Marquesas today only when the conditions
are such that the chances of detection are the slightest, and never
under any circumstances with the ceremonies which attended the rites
of three or four decades ago. The "long-pig"--the polite euphemism by
which man-meat is designated--may be quietly cut up and distributed
among a hundred families in a half dozen different villages, each of
which will partake of its precious tidbit in private and strictest
secrecy. Again, the body may be buried after only a small portion has
been reserved for eating. Just previous to our arrival in Nukahiva a
body from which only the hands were missing was washed ashore at
Anaho during a heavy southwester. Investigation showed it to be that
of one Teona, a resident of Hatiheu, a native who, three days
previously, had, according to the story of his companions, fallen from
their canoe and been drowned. The latter, after four days' confinement
in a dark cell at Taio-haie--the extremest torture to which the
superstitious Marquesan may be subjected--confessed that they had
killed Teona during a coconut wine debauch, and after cutting off his
hands and eating them, had weighted the body with stones and dropped it
out to sea. They were given the extreme penalty--two weeks' confinement
in the dark, to be followed by a year of weed-cutting on the village
street. One died of hysteria before the first week was out, and the
ther, at the end of ten days, killed himself by gashing his wrist on a
jagged corner of the sheet iron wall of his prison.
The Marquesan's terror of the dark is so extreme that it is not a rare
thing for men, women and children to die of fright during eclipses.
In view of this, there seems some ground for the contention that the
French practice of confining convicted, and occasionally suspected,
murderers and cannibals in windowless sheet iron cells is scarcely less
barbarous than the crimes for which punishment is being meted out.
The great cannibal feast grounds of Nukahiva and Hiva-oa are not
only not used at the present time, but are even so strictly _tabu_
that no native can be found who will venture within their forbidden
confines. Stevenson writes of visiting the Hatiheu "high-place" in
company with a French priest and a native boy; but on the occasion of
our visit we held out every conceivable inducement in an endeavour
to secure native guides to the same feast-ground, and quite in vain.
Not even among the converts of the Catholic fathers could be found
one who held the _tabu_ lightly enough to dare to violate it. The
best we could do was to persuade several of them to accompany us to
the line of the _tabu_, and there to await our return, while we went
over the ruins with McGrath. The following description is from notes
taken by Claribel on this occasion, and subsequently amplified under
the direction of McGrath, who, in the fifteen years he has maintained
a trading store at Hatiheu, has missed no opportunity to push
enquiries amongst the older natives regarding what is unquestionably
the most interesting ruin of its kind in the South Pacific:
"On the seaward side of a spur of the mountain a level space, oval in
general shape, had been partly excavated, partly built up, so that
there was a smooth floor about 300 feet long by 200 feet wide. In a
semi-circle, with the chief's house in the centre, were the little
'feast-houses' of the court dignitaries and the special guests. Beneath
the posts of each house excavations have disclosed a number of human
bones which bear witness to the sacrifice which accompanied the setting
of every pillar. In these little booths the guests remained during the
feasts, some of which, when food was plenty or some especially great
event was to be celebrated, lasted over a week. Each guest brought some
contribution to the feast, and when it was over he was privileged to
gather up and carry home any fragments that he liked.
"The 'dining-room' was the space in front of the houses, and there,
spread on the huge leaves of the banana and taro, the feast was laid.
Meat was handled with big four-tined forks of wood; poi and other
soft dishes in calabashes of coco shell and shallow wooden platters.
The drinking cups, in which were served a fiery wine made from the
juice of the tender shoots of the coconut, were the hollow shells of
nuts. The food, in addition to human flesh or 'long-pig,' included
the meat of the wild cattle, goats and pigs, roasted, boiled, fried and
salted raw, and served with _miti-hari_, a most piquant sauce still in
use and which is composed of a mixture of lime juice and the
pressed-out milk of grated coconuts. Bananas and plantains, cooked
and uncooked, were served; also taro in balls which looked like mud
and tasted like sago and brown sugar; breadfruit, avocados, seaweed,
squid, prawns and shrimps and an endless variety of indigenous
tropical fruits.
"The general plan of the place was, roughly, as follows: Beginning
at the right and running in a seaward direction, there was first the
private stairway for an official who might be designated as the Captain
of the Guard, a curving four-foot passage, the steps of which were
cut into the earth and faced with stones. This stairway led up to the
box where the Captain presided during the festivities, and was for
his private use. Next came the main approach to the feast level, a
stairway two paces in width, terminating between two round towers in
which soldiers with clubs were stationed to welcome bona fide guests
and intercept intruders. A functionary who stood at the head of the
stairs greeted each guest on his arrival with a loud shout of welcome
and a blast from a _pao_ or conch trumpet, announcing him immediately
afterwards to the company with a flowery recital of his personal career.
"Farther on was the stairway for the cooks, provision bearers and
the human victims. This led to the 'kitchen,' where the firestones
and chopping blocks were located. The firestones lined a circular
depression in the earth, and after this had been thoroughly heated,
the meat and fruit, all wrapped in _ti_ leaves, were laid sociably
together to cook. The blackened stones of this old cannibal oven are
still in place, and a half-hour's work with an ax and cutlass would
put it in shape for service.
[Illustration: THE BEST SURVIVING EXAMPLE OF
MARQUESAN TATTOOING]
[Illustration: "INTO IT WERE THROWN THE BONES
OF THE VICTIMS AFTER THE FEAST WAS OVER"]
"Back of the kitchen was the 'larder,' a round, deep hole where the
'long-pig' was kept until ready for the oven. Directly over the mouth
of this hole, and about forty feet above it, was the horizontally
projecting limb of the sacred banyan, the only tree, by the way, which
was permitted to grow within the walls. Over this limb hung a stout
rope braided of the fibrous bark of the _hau_ tree. When the call
for more meat came from the 'kitchen,' the noosed end of this rope
was lowered over the head of the victim next in order, and he was
pushed over the brink of the hole, the fall usually breaking his neck.
Dismemberment, according to prescribed rules, followed, the choice
bits, such as the hands and eyes and ears, being laid aside for the
chiefs.
"Beyond the oven, and not far from the chief's house, was what might be
called the 'bone-hole,' a rock-lined, well-like sort of an affair about
nine feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. Into it were thrown the
bones of the victims after the feast was over, and above these gruesome
remnants the priests performed certain ceremonies calculated to protect
the living from the spirits of the outraged dead. Cutting around the
rim of this hole with our cutlasses, we managed, after an hour of
tugging and hauling, to dislodge and remove a great mass of creepers,
disclosing a huge pile of human bones. A couple of pieces of mahogany,
which must have been taken from some ship, were lying near the top of
the heap, and led us to wonder how many of the bones mouldering in
the pile beneath were those of white men.
"After the keen edges of their appetites had worn off, the feasters
adjourned to the 'dance hall,' a rectangular subterranean chamber of
about thirty by fifty feet. The most of this great room was a natural
cave which pierced the mountain immediately under the feast ground,
but to seaward a considerable extension of masonry had been added
to give more space. The latter had been destroyed in a freshet and
hurricane which occurred about two years previous to our visit, but the
cave portion was still in a fair state of preservation. This had been
roughly squared with walls of fitted boulders, and off from it opened
numerous little retiring rooms which connected with private stairways
with the group of guest-houses above. The floor of this chamber was
covered with a cement made of coral lime and a puttylike clay, and
still remains as smooth and hard as concrete.
"The hall was lighted with torches of _kukui_ nuts, the sooty stains
of which on the walls the seepages of years have not entirely effaced.
Fantastic indeed must have been the barbaric assemblage as revealed in
their flickering light: the hideously tattooed dancers in head-dresses
fashioned in imitation of the forms of birds and animals and fishes;
the musicians drumming on the hollow trunks of _burao_ and _hau_,
shaking shell and bone rattles, tooting conches and blowing shrill cane
whistles; the packed ranks of the spectators, shouting and clapping
encouragement and tossing off _epu_ after _epu_ of the fiery coconut
wine. Hour after hour the dancers reeled in the delirious abandon of
the Marquesan _hula_; now gliding, with a sinuous, snaky motion,
their oil-glistening bodies bent almost to the floor; now leaping wildly
into the air, with shouts and shrill screams, lunging with their war
clubs at imaginary foes; now seated on long woven mats of pandanus
fibre before the dais where royalty reclined, bending and swaying their
supple forms in a series of graceful, rhythmic motions, accompanied
only by a song, the clappings of hands or the beating of the wooden
drums. The boom of the drums, the shrilling of the whistles, the
shouts of the spectators, the shrieks of the dancers and the swishings
of their bare feet upon the floor--how it all must have stirred and
amazed even those roistering old pirate and whaling captains when it
struck upon their ears for the first time!"