CIRCLING TAHITI
The island of Tahiti has been the best known, or rather the most
talked-about, point in the South Pacific since those latitudes were
added to the mapped sections of the world. From the time that the
much-maundered-over mutiny of the _Bounty_ furnished the theme
for Byron's "Island," and later events conspired to produce Hermann
Melville's charming "Omoo" and Pierre Loti's idyllic "Rarahue," down
to the more numerous but less finished efforts of recent years, Tahiti
has been the inspiration for more literary endeavour, good and bad,
than all the rest of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia combined.
Undoubtedly it has had more than its share of publicity--latterly,
largely because it is so easily and comfortably reached from both
America and Australia--but the fact remains that it is uniquely--if
not quite unmixedly--charming, and that it is perhaps better fitted to
minister to the creature comforts of the visitor than any other of its
sister islands of the South Pacific.
Civilization in the form of the galvanized iron roof, the glass window,
the missionary, the _holakau_ or Mother Hubbard wrapper and the
whisky bottle has thrown its coldly corrective influence over the native
life of Tahiti; but if it is the Kanaka in his pristine purity that one
is seeking, Moorea and Bora-Bora--both in the Society Group--and the
Paumotos and Marquesas are close at hand, and any of these the
venturesome may reach by trading schooner, even if he is not so
fortunate as to have a yacht at his disposal.
Chief item in the visitor's program in Tahiti--after he has called on
the Governor, appeared at the Club and spent a small sack of Chilean
_pesos_ to see a _hula_ which has been so completely "expurgated and
legalized" as to make a Maypole dance on the green in his old home
appear Bacchanalian by comparison--is the hundred-mile drive around
the island. The roads are bad over half the way and the vehicles all the
way, but the ride unfolds such an unending panorama of sea, surf and
lagoon; of beach and reef; of mountain, cliff and crag; of torrent,
cascade and waterfall, and of reckless, riotous, onrushing tropical
vegetation as can be found along few, if any, similar stretches of
road elsewhere in the world. Our drive, in the company of the
American Consul, William Doty, and his sister, on which we were
entertained each day by a different district chief with
specially-arranged surf-rides, feasts, dances and _himines_, was
one unbroken succession of new and delightful sensations.
At Tautira, the village second in importance to Papeete, we were the
guest for three days of the suave and dignified old Ori, a chief
who was once the host of the Stevensons for many weeks, and who, on
occasion, fairly bubbled with piquant anecdotes of the great novelist.
Returning down the leeward side of the island, we spent a day and
a night with the wealthy Teta-nui in a big, comfortable two-story
house which might have passed for a Southern plantation home of the
ante-bellum days, and also found time to accept a luncheon invitation
from the scholarly Tau-te Salmon, relation of the late King Pomare,
university man and, on the occasion of his visits abroad, the fêted
guest of Washington, London and Paris.
Tahitian driving comes pretty near to being the most reckless thing of
the kind in my experience. It really isn't driving at all; "herding" is
a more appropriate term. If your vehicle has more than one seat there
will be three or four horses to haul it, driven "spike" in the former
case, by twos in the latter. These animals are attached to the rig by
traces that run to their collars, which, with the reins, constitute all
there is to the harness. There is nothing in the nature of breeching
for holding back, and, as the vehicle never has a brake, there is no
way the wheel horses can save their heels but by beating it down the
hills. A good driver will handle two horses unaided; beyond that
number a boy is required upon the back of each additional one. With
your driver and post boys wearing each a gaudy hibiscus or _tiaré_
behind his ear, with their braided whips cracking merrily at
everything from stray dogs and blossoms to the horses' ears and each
other, and with all of them raising their voices in _himine_ after
_himine_ with the indefatigability of a frog-pond chorus, your
progress, on the score of picturesqueness at least, has no odds to ask
of a Roman Triumph.
We decided to make the circuit by starting to windward and taking the
roughest part of the road first. In a mile or two the last straggling
Papeetan suburb had been left behind, the tall pillar of the Point
Venus lighthouse was passed, and the road, plunging into the half-light
of the jungle, became a grassy track. Here and there were breaks in the
encompassing walls of verdure, and through them we had transient
glimpses of the landscape--"that smiling Tahitian landscape where the
weeds laugh at the idea of road boundaries; where the sea, disdaining
regular shoreline, straggles aimlessly among its hundred islets; where
the mountains flaunt all known laws of natural architecture and the
wind disdains regular blasts; where the sun, as careless as the rest,
shines one moment above the palm fronds as clear as frosted silver,
and the next hides completely behind the lowering mask of a black
cloud--a kingdom of _laissez-faire_."
In the seventy-five miles from Papeete to Tautira by the windward
route there is an average of more than one stream for every mile, and
not a single bridge in the whole distance. As this side of the island
has an inch or more of rain daily for most of the year, it may be
understood that many of the streams are formidable torrents and by
no means easily forded. The approved way of crossing, especially if
you have a spirited driver and horses and are not without spirit
yourself, is to join your Jehu and the postillions in their cannibal
war-whoops and endeavour to take the obstacle like a water-jump
in a steeple-chase. Now and then--just often enough to keep you
from becoming discouraged and adopting more conservative
tactics--your outfit, smothered in flying gravel and sun-kissed spray,
reaches the farther bank and goes reeling on its course; usually a
wheel hits a boulder and you stop short; and here is where the
synthetically constructed harnesses--bits of old straps, wire, tough
strands of liana and vegetable fibre--vindicate their existence.
Nothing short of a charge of dynamite will move the boulder against
which the near wheel is securely jammed. With the horses going
berserk at thirty miles an hour, therefore, something has to give way,
and the Tahitian has wisely figured that it is easier to patch a harness
than a wagon. So it happens that when the latter is brought up short
in midstream, the harnesses dissolve like webs of gossamer and the
horses pop out of them and go on ahead. The driver, and any one who
chances to be on the front seat with him, usually follows the horses
for a few yards; those upon the back seats telescope upon one another.
The assistance of wayfaring natives is almost imperative at this
juncture and, strange to tell, with the infallibility of St. Bernard
dogs in children's Alpine stories, they always seem to turn up at the
psychologic moment.
From one such predicament our party was rescued by a bevy of girls on
their way to market. These, after a short spell of not unpardonable
mirth had subsided, manfully tucked up their _pareos_, put their sturdy
brown shoulders to the wheels and literally lifted the whole outfit
through to the bank. An hour later, after a similar mishap, we were all
carried ashore on the broad coconut-oiled backs of the half-intoxicated
members of a party of revellers, who left a _hula_ unfinished to rush
to the rescue. They were all real "mitinaire boys," they said, and were
"ver' glad to help Chris'yun white vis'tor." And to show that these
were not idle words, they offered to carry us all across the stream and
back again in pure good fellowship.
One of them, in fact, a six-foot Apollo with his matted hair rakishly
topped with a coronal of white _tiare_, had Claribel over his shoulder
and half way down the bank before we could convince him that we
were fully assured of his good will without further demonstration.
The imperturbable Claribel, having been "cannibal broke" in the
Marquesas, accepted the impetuous gallantry with the philosophical
passivity of the sack of copra she might have been for all the Kanaka
Lochinvar's care in keeping her right side up. This was our only
experience of anything approaching a lack of courtesy in a Tahitian,
and the victim's charitable interpretation of the act as a mistaken
kindness saved the offender from even being denied participation in
the division of a handful of coppers.
Hiteaea, a village situated half way down the windward side of the
island from Papeete, is as lovely as a steamship company's folder
description; the kind of a place you have always suspected never
existed outside the imagination of a drop-curtain painter. Half of the
settlement is smothered in giant bamboos, curving and feather-tipped,
and the remainder in flamboyant, frangipani and _burao_ trees, which
carpet the ground inches deep with blossoms of scarlet, waxy cream
and pale gold. Nothing less strong than the persistent southeast
Trade-wind could furnish the place with air; nothing less bright than
the equatorial sun could pierce the dense curtains with shafts of light.
Toward the sea the jungle thins and in a palm-dotted clearing, walled
in with flowering stephanosis and _tiare_, are the brown thatched
houses of the Chief. A rolling natural lawn leads down to the beach
of shining coral clinkers, which curves about a lagoon reflecting
the blended shades of lapis lazuli, chrysoprase and pale jade. A
froth-white lace collar of surf reveals the outer reef, and across the
cloud-mottled indigo sea loom the fantastic heights of the
mountains and cliffs behind Tautira.
The squealing of chased pigs and the squawk of captured chickens
welled up to our ears as we topped the last divide and saw the blue
smoke of the Hiteaea flesh-pots filtering through the green curtain
which still hid the village from our sight, sounds which, to the trained
ears of our island friends, the Dotys, told that their messenger had
carried the news of our coming and that fitting preparations were being
made for our reception. The wayfarer in colder, greyer climes sings of
the emotions awakened in his breast by the "watch-dog's deep-mouthed
welcome" as he draws near home, or of the "lamp in the window" which
is waiting for him; to the Tahitian traveller all that the dog and the
lamp express, and a deal more besides, is carried in the dying wails
of pigs and chickens, the inevitable signal of rushed preparations for
expected visitors.
Our driver and post-boys answered the signal with a glad chorus of
yells, and the jaded horses, a moment before drooping from the stiff
climb to the summit of the divide, galvanized into life and dashed
off down the serpentine trough of roots and tussocks which answered
for a road at a rate which kept the tugs connecting them to the madly
pursuing chariot straightened all the way to the beach. Some of us
were shouting with excitement, some with fright, and some of the less
stoical--at the buffets dealt them by the half-padded cushions and the
swaying sides--even with pain. Most of the unsecured baggage--cameras,
suitcases, hand-bags, phonograph records and the like--went flying off
like nebulæ in our comet-like wake; a man with a load of plantain was
knocked sprawling, a litter of pigs ground under foot, a flock of ducks
parted down the middle and a bevy of babies just avoided, before we
brought up in a shower of tinkling coral at the door of the Chief's
house. It was as spectacular an entry as even our postboys could have
desired, but our garrulous gratulation was checked an instant later
when two grave faced young women in black _holakaus_ came out to tell
us that their father, the Chief, had died the night before.
The good souls, in spite of their sorrow and the endless amount of
ceremony and preparation incident to the funeral of a Tahitian chief,
had made all the arrangements to accommodate us for the night, and
would neither permit us to take the road again for Terevao, nor to put
up with anything less than the best that Hiteaea had to offer. So the
evening of feasting which would ordinarily have been our portion, was
dispensed with, and we spent the night quietly and comfortably in the
house of mourning.
Beyond Hiteaea the road dips into the vanilla bean zone, and from there
to the Taiarapu Isthmus the gushing Trade-wind smites the nostrils like
a blast from a pastry cook's oven. Vanilla is one of Tahiti's budding
industries, and like everything else industrial in the Societies, seems
likely not to get far beyond the budding stage. The vanilla vine
requires little but heat, moisture, a tree to climb upon and a little
care. The natural conditions are near ideal in the jungle sections of
Tahiti, but the hitch has come on the score of care.
A number of Chinamen, with plantations small enough to allow them to
do their own work, are making a considerable success of vanilla, but
where Kanakas have had to be employed there has been nothing but
failure. A native set to pollenize a lot of vines--this has to be done
artificially in Tahiti on account of the absence of the insects which
perform that service in other countries--is more likely than not to
pick the orchidlike flowers to chew or stick behind his ear, or to
weave the new tendrils into garlands for his Olympian brow. They
tell you in Papeete that the vanilla industry is not flourishing
because of the increasing use of artificial flavouring extracts in
America; the real reason for its backwardness is the non-use of
an artificial--or any other kind of--labour extractor on the Kanaka.
At the Isthmus of Terevao the girdling highway swings back down the
leeward side of the island to Papeete. Tautira is reached by a spur
which is, however, much better maintained than portions of the main
road. The bush is not so dense in this part of the island as along
the road we had just traversed, but the mountains, especially in the
vicinity of Tautira, assume an even wilder aspect than any down to
windward. Knife-pointed pinnacles of every conceivable shade of blue,
green and purple are tossed together in an aimless jumble, showing
the skyline of a battered saw. Here a mountain has been rent by some
Titan to let a river through; there a mountain has refused to rend
and a river closes its eyes and launches itself over a thousand-foot
cliff, paling with terror as it realizes the magnitude of its leap and
changing from a bar of green jade to a fluttering scarf of grey satin,
finally to collapse into a rumple of white gossamer where the jungle
riots in shimmering verdancy against the foot of the cliff.
Unfathomable gorges with overhanging sides tunnel into the hearts of
unclimbable mountains; sheer precipices drop curtains of creepers that
dangle their be-tasselled skirts in the quiet river reaches hundreds of
feet below; ghostly castles, scarped and buttressed and battlemented,
now of mist-wreathed rock, now of rockpierced mist, fade and
reappear with the shifting of the curtains of the clouds; and above is
the flaming, sun-shot sky, below the wind-tossed, diamond-sprinkled
ocean. Very pertinent was Claribel's observation in point.
"What does the Frenchman want of absinthe and the Chinaman of
opium when they both have a place like this to look upon?" she
ejaculated between jolts as we bounded along between the mountains
and the sea on this last lap of the outward journey; "it is a dream
that nothing but a flying Tahitian chariot brought up short by a
four-foot mid-river boulder can bring you out of."
An instant later the very thing which Claribel had defined as alone
being equal to waking one from his dream of the mountains had
eventuated, and because the left fore wheel had been called upon to
stand more than its share of such jolts, it dished up like a closed
umbrella, collapsed, and precipitated every one and everything in
the long-suffering old vehicle into the water. Luckily, Tautira, our
destination, lay just beyond the farther bank and, salvaging a couple
of bags containing changes of only slightly wet clothes, we waded
out and proceeded on foot to the house which Chief Ori had
prepared for us, leaving the driver to bring on the wreckage at
leisure.
Tautira, though the second town of the island, is almost entirely
a native settlement, the "foreign colony" consisting of but one
missionary, one trader and one French official. This does not mean
that the town is backward or decadent, but rather to the contrary.
Missionaries, as a pretty general rule, will always be found thickest
on the "firing line," and where operations are in the hands of a single
white or native preacher it may be taken to indicate that the people,
professedly at least, are well within the fold. There is but one trader
in Tautira because the natives are shrewd enough to own their own
cutters and trade directly with Papeete. The official is there to collect
taxes, not because he is needed to keep order. As far as morals are
concerned, Consul Doty expressed it very well when he said that
"there is more mischief to the square foot--or should I say the
rounded ankle?--in Papeete than in all of Tautira."
Except for its scenery, Tautira's chief claim to distinction is Ori,
and Ori's chief claim to distinction is the fact that he was the host
for a month or more of Robert Louis Stevenson's party on the
novelist's first cruise to the South Seas in the _Casco_. Stevenson,
still weak from overwork and hardly yet beginning to feel the
beneficial effects of the cruise, was ill during nearly all of his stay
in Tautira. No account of this visit appears in his South Sea book,
but in the published letters of his mother it is written of at length,
and most entertainingly.
From Mrs. Stevenson's account it would appear that the party was
tendered the usual round of feasts, dances and gifts, and countered
with feasts and gift-givings of its own. They tell you in Papeete
that Stevenson's illness during this visit made him see their island
through dark glasses, and that this was the reason that he ultimately
settled in Samoa instead of Tahiti. From the standpoint of picturesque
and tropical loveliness Tautira, and even Papeete, is distinctly ahead
of Apia, so that it is more likely that the greater attractiveness of the
incomparable Samoan native who, then as now, was much less
touched by white influence than the Tahitian, turned the scale in
favour of the more westerly group for the novelist's home.
Ori--a wily old hypocrite whose six-feet-four of stature, unlike
that of most Tahitians, is not cumbered with an ounce of superfluous
flesh--made a great point of assuring us that the whole plan of
entertainment provided for our party was patterned on that which he
had dispensed to the Stevensons. We were quartered in one of the
houses the Stevensons had occupied; quite as many pigs and chickens
were slaughtered for our "native" feasts as for those of the Stevensons;
full as many singers were mustered for our _himines_ as turned out
for the Stevensons; he would lavish quite as rich gifts upon us as he
did upon the Stevensons, and--the Stevensons had given him such and
such and such things, ad infinitum. Inasmuch as we were paying for our
entertainment at a rate which we knew to be about a hundred per cent.
above the normal, there was little of base ingratitude in the remark of
the Commodore who, when his knife blade turned on the rubberoid leg
of one of Ori's broilers, asked that venerable rascal if the drumstick in
question came from one of the chickens left over by the Stevensons.
For some reason chickens, like wine, refuse to age properly in the
South Pacific. It may be the heat, it may be the humidity; at any rate
a chicken of greater age than two months, however cooked, makes a
_piece de resistance_ in a most painfully literal sense. Luckily, the
Tahitian pig, cooked in island fashion, is as much above the average
porker of temperate latitudes as the Tahitian broiler falls below the
standard in his class. Any kind of a cut from a six-months-old
coconut-fed pig, cooked on hot stones and served with the inimitable
_miti-hari_ sauce, will awaken an ecstasy in the palate the memory
of which cannot be eradicated by a lifetime of gastronomic
experience with the most vaunted viands of other climes. The recipe
for preparing this incomparable delicacy would be about as follows:
Dig a hole in the ground big enough comfortably to bury a pig in and
fill it with smooth, round river-bottom stones. Collect half a cord
or so of dry wood and start a fire on the stones. Leaving a boy to
stoke the fire, take the eight or ten hours in which the stones are
coming to a dull cherry red to find just the right sort of a pig. From
three to six months is the best age, and, if possible, get an animal
that has been penned and fed upon nothing but young coconuts. If there
has been a few odd bread-fruits, bananas, mangoes, papayas, avocados,
star-apples and the like thrown in to him occasionally it will not
make much difference, but avoid the young porker that has rustled for
himself about the copra shacks and along the beach.
Kill the pig and dress in the usual manner, but without cutting off the
head and feet or removing the skin. Wrap the body several inches deep
in banana or plantain leaves and plaster the whole thickly with sticky
mud. Then, if the stones are red, remove them with a pole, throw in the
wrapped pig and push them back again. Best to let a native watch the
progress of the cooking, as a great deal depends upon taking out the pig
at the right time, and a lifetime of experience is required to forecast
the precise condition to which it is roasted from a whiff of the steam.
You might try your hand with _miti-hari_ before leaving the rest of
the feast for the natives to prepare. This is the sauce par excellence
of the South Pacific, and, as far as my own experience goes, quite
without a peer in any other part of the world. Send for a quart of
grated coconut meat (most of the native houses keep it on hand), and
after soaking it for a few minutes in sea water, pour out on a square
of stout muslin, twist the corners of the latter together and bring all
the pressure possible to bear on the contents. The result is a cupful
of thick, rich milk which, on the addition of the juice of a couple of
limes and a red pepper or two, becomes the marvellous and
transmutative _miti-hari_.
I recall hearing in Papeete a story concerning the amazing things
that tourists have eaten under the gastronomic intoxication incident
to tasting the wonderful miti sauce with which they--the things--were
dressed. I believe a piece of rubber blanket was on the list. I don't
exactly recall what else, though I do remember hearing Claribel say
that a dash of _miti-hari_ on the story itself might make it easier to
swallow. But Claribel, unduly proud of her own salad dressings, was
somewhat prejudiced against the incomparable Tahitian sauce.
The Tahitian "native" feast does not differ in any salient particulars
from the often-described Hawaiian _luau_. The guests sit on the ground
and eat the various "dishes," which are spread before them on banana
leaves, from their fingers. In addition to pig, chicken and the
inevitable breadfruit, the menu always includes a liberal supply of fish,
both cooked in _ti_ leaves and pickled raw in lime juice; taro, boiled
and mashed; bananas and plantain of a dozen different varieties; fillet
of squid, very exquisite prawns and your choice of a score of varieties
of strange and delicious tropical fruits with unwritable names.
If the feast is given you by a person of wealth and importance, or if
you are paying a chief like the canny Ori a sum sufficient to make it
an inducement, you may get a taste of coconut sprout salad. The raw
fish is far from unpalatable and the prawns are exquisite, but the coco
sprout salad is the only dish of the lot worthy to be mentioned in the
same breath with the _miti-hari_-ed pig. Unfortunately, as every tiny
sprout in the salad means the death of a young coco palm, the dish is
more often discussed than digested. A substitute made of the tender
fronds of young ferns is itself pretty near a high-water mark until you
have tasted that from coco sprouts. As for the coco-fed pig and the
_miti-hari_ dressing, if it doesn't prepare your face for a look of
distant superiority whenever again you hear men extolling this or that
culinary achievement as worthy of place on the top-most pinnacle of
gastronomic excellence, it is because you are suffering from atrophy of
the palate.
_Kava_, so popular in the Samoas and Fiji, was not--Byron to the
contrary notwithstanding--and is not, drunk in Tahiti. Feasting with
natives outside of missionary circles, you will probably have a chance
to "experience" orange wine. This is a harmless-looking beverage
of insinuating ways, in the lucent depths of the first three or four
coco shell cups of which lurks no hint of the devil who is curled up in
the bottom of the fifth or sixth, and all thereafter. The proverbial
ungentlemanliness of the onslaught of a "battleship" punch upon a
débutante at her first dance on board is nothing to the "assault from
ambush" of orange wine upon the unwary stranger who dallies
overlong above its cup.
Coco wine--not the coco toddy that figured in my Marquesan pig hunt,
which is a baser concoction--fermented from a juice drawn from the
heart of the trunk of that palm, is expensive and hard to obtain at any
cost. It is a gentleman's drink, however, and scorns to practise any of
the "behind-the-back" tactics of the soft-footed orange thunderbolt.
It romps down the throat like a torch-light procession and promptly
starts a conflagration that spreads like wild-fire from the head to the
heels. An American Indian after a couple of _epus_ of coco wine would
commence murdering his fellows, as he does under the influence of the
fiery _mescal_; the gentle Tahitian in like instance, though quite as
much uplifted, both mentally and physically, as the redskin, is content
to murder sleep--his own and every one's else. He enters upon a period
of song and dance which lasts as long as the supply of wine, and there
is no peace within a quarter-mile radius of the centre of disturbance.
In America or Europe a man showing the same symptoms as does a
Kanaka under the influence of coco wine would be gagged,
strait-jacketed and thrust into a padded cell. In Tahiti the smiling
policeman, if the offender becomes too boisterously obstreperous,
accomplishes a similar result by pitching him into the sea. At first
blush this strikes one as being a somewhat drastic proceeding, but the
Tahitian, being amphibious, rarely comes to harm in the water. Indeed,
I have the assurance of a prominent merchant of Papeete that "you
would be surprised how few of these ducked natives are really
drowned!" I will return to the Tahitian in his "lighter moments" in
another chapter.
* * * * *
Ori's resources of entertainment, by a strange coincidence, came to an
end at the same time as did our big sack of Chilean _pesos_, and we
returned by the smooth, well-metalled leeward road to Papeete, where
we were planning two or three affairs on the yacht in an endeavour to
make a small return of the hospitality we had enjoyed from the day
of our arrival. We still had something to learn about "Society in
the Societies," however, and we were on our way to the initiation.