A walk in the jungle; the old woman in the breadfruit tree; a night
in a native hut on the mountain.
Atuona Valley was dozing, as was its wont in the afternoons, when
the governor, accompanied by the guardian of the palace, each
carrying a shot-gun, invited me to go up the mountain to shoot
_kukus_ for dinner. The _kuku_ is a small green turtle-dove, very
common in the islands, and called also _u'u_ and _kukupa_. Under any
of these names the green-feathered morsel is excellent eating when
broiled or fried.
I did not take a gun, as, unless hunger demands it, I do not like to
kill. We started out together, climbing the trail in single file,
but the enthusiasm of the chase soon led my companions into the
deeper brush where the little doves lured them, and only the sharp
crack of an occasional shot wakening the echoes of the cliffs
disturbed my solitude.
The dark stillness of the deep valley, where the shadows of the
mountains fell upon groves of cocoanuts and miles of tangled bush,
recalled to me a cañon in New York City, in the center of the world
of finance, gloomy even at noon, the sky-touching buildings darkening
the street and the spirits of the dwellers like mountains. There,
when at an unsual moment I had come from the artificially-lighted
cage of a thousand slaves to money-getting, and found the street for
a second deserted, no figure of animal or human in its sombre sweep,
I had the same sensation of solitude and awe as in this jungle.
Suddenly a multitude of people had debouched from many points, and
shattered the impression.
But here, in Atuona Valley, the hoot of the owl, the _kouku_, which
in Malay is the ghost-bird, the _burong-hantu_, seemed to deepen the
silence. Does not that word _hantu_, meaning in Malay an evil spirit,
have some obscure connection with our American negro "hant," a
goblin or ghost? Certainly the bird's long and dismal "Hoo-oo-oo"
wailing through the shuddering forest evoked dim and chilling
memories of tales told by candlelight when I was a child in Maryland.
Here on the lower levels I was still among the cocoanut-groves. The
trail passed through acres of them, their tall gray columns rising
like cathedral arches eighty feet above a green mat of creeping vines.
Again it dipped into the woods, where one or two palms struggled
upward from a clutching jungle. Everywhere I saw the nuts tied by
their natural stems in clumps of forty or fifty and fastened to
limbs which had been cut and lashed between trees. These had been
gathered by climbers and left thus to be collected for drying into
copra.
Constantly the ripe nuts not yet gathered fell about me. These heavy
missiles, many six or seven pounds in weight, fell from heights of
fifty to one hundred feet and struck the earth with a dull sound.
The roads and trails were littered with them. They fall every hour of
the day in the tropics, yet I have never seen any one hurt by them.
Narrow escapes I had myself, and I have heard of one or two who were
severely injured or even killed by them, but the accidents are
entirely out of proportion to the shots fired by the trees. One
becomes an expert at dodging, and an instinct draws one's eyes to
the branch about to shed a _mei_, or the palm intending to launch a
cocoanut.
As I made my way up the trail, pausing now and then to look about me,
I came upon an old woman leaning feebly on a tall staff. Although it
was the hour of afternoon sleep, she was abroad for some reason, and
I stopped to say "_Kaoha_," to her. A figure of wretchedness she was,
bent almost double, her withered, decrepit limbs clad in a ragged
_pareu_ and her lean arms clutching the stick that bore her weight.
She was so aged that she appeared unable to hear my greeting, and
replied only mutteringly, while her bleary eyes gleamed up at me
between fallen lids.
Such miserable age appealed to pity, but as she appeared to wish no
aid, I left her leaning on her staff, and moved farther along the
trail, stopping again to gaze at the shadowed valley below while I
mused on the centuries it had seen and the brief moment of a man's
life. Standing thus, I was like to lose my own, for suddenly I heard
a whirr like that of a shrapnel shell on its murderous errand, and
at my feet fell a projectile.
I saw that it was a breadfruit and that I was under the greatest
tree of that variety I had ever seen, a hundred feet high and
spreading like a giant oak. In the topmost branches was the
tottering beldame I had saluted, and in both her hands the staff, a
dozen feet long. She was threshing the fruit from the tree with
astounding energy and agility, her scanty rags blown by the wind,
and her emaciated, naked figure in its arboreal surroundings like
that of an aged ape.
How she held on was a mystery, for she seemed to lean out from a
limb at a right angle, yet she had but a toe-hold upon it. No part
of her body but her feet touched the branch, nor had she any other
support but that, yet she banged the staff about actively and sent
more six-pounders down, so that I fled without further reflection.
The score of houses strung along the upper reaches of Atuona Valley
were silent at this hour, and everywhere native houses were decaying,
their falling walls and sunken roofs remembering the thousands who
once had their homes here. Occasionally in our own country we see
houses untenanted and falling to ruin, bearing unmistakable
evidences of death or desertion, and I have followed armies that
devastated a countryside and slew its people or hunted them to the
hills, but the first is a solitary case, and the second, though full
of horror, has at least the element of activity, of moving and
struggling life. The rotting homes of the Marquesan people speak
more eloquently of death than do sunken graves.
In these vales, which each held a thousand or several thousand when
the blight of the white man came, the abandoned _paepaes_ are solemn
and shrouded witnesses of the death of a race. The jungle runs over
them, and only remnants remain of the houses that sat upon them.
Their owners have died, leaving no posterity to inhabit their homes;
neighbors have removed their few chattels, and the wilderness has
claimed its own. In every valley these dark monuments to the
benefits of civilization hide themselves in the thickets.
None treads the stones that held the houses of the dead. They are
_tapu_; about them flit the _veinahae_, the _matiahae_, and the
_etuahae_, dread vampires and ghosts that have charge of the
corpse and wait to seize the living. Well have these ghoulish
phantoms feasted; whole islands are theirs, and soon they will sit
upon the _paepae_ of the last Marquesan.
I reached the top of the gulch and paused to gaze at its extent. The
great hills rose sheer and rugged a mile away; the cocoanuts ceased
at a lower level, and where I stood the precipices were a mass of
wild trees, bushes, and creepers. From black to lightest green the
colors ran, from smoky crests and gloomy ravines to the stream
singing its way a hundred feet below the trail.
A hundred varieties of flowers poured forth their perfume upon the
lonely scene. The frangipani, the red jasmine of delicious odor, and
tropical gardenias, weighted the warm air with their heavy scents.
Beside the trail grew the _hutu_-tree with crimson-tasseled flowers
among broad leaves, and fruit prickly and pear-shaped. It is a fruit
not to be eaten by man, but immemorally used by lazy fishermen to
insure miraculous draughts. Streams are dammed up and the pears
thrown in. Soon the fish become stupified and float upon the surface
to the gaping nets of the poisoners. They are not hurt in flavor or
edibility.
The _keoho_, a thorny shrub, caught at my clothes as I left the trail.
Its weapons of defence serve often as pins for the native, who in
the forest improvises for himself a hat or umbrella of leaves.
Beside me, too, was the _putara_, a broad-leaved bush and the lemon
hibiscus, with its big, yellow flower, black-centered, was twisted
through these shrubs and wound about the trunk of the giant _aea_, in
whose branches the _kuku_ murmured to its mate. Often the flowering
vine stopped my progress. I struggled to free myself from its clutch
as I fought through the mass of vegetation, and pausing perforce to
let my panting lungs gulp the air, I saw around me ever new and
stranger growths--orchids, giant creepers, the _noni enata_, a small
bush with crimson pears upon it, the _toa_, or ironwood, which gave
deadly clubs in war-time, but now spread its boughs peacefully
amidst the prodigal foliage of its neighbors.
The umbrella fern, _mana-mana-hine_, was all about. The _ama_, the
candlenut-tree, shed its oily nuts on the earth. The _puu-epu_, the
paper mulberry, with yellow blossoms and cottony, round leaves,
jostled pandanus and hibiscus; the _ena-vao_, a wild ginger with
edible, but spicy, cones, and the lacebark-tree, the _faufee_, which
furnishes cordage from its bark, contested for footing in the rich
earth and fought for the sun that even on the brightest day never
reached their roots.
I staggered through the bush, falling over rotten trees and
struggling in the mass of shrubs and tangled vines.
Away up here, hidden in the depths of the forest, there were three
or four houses; not the blue-painted or whitewashed cabins of the
settlement, but half-open native cots, with smoke rising from the
fire made in a circle of stones on the _paepaes_. The hour of sleep
had passed, and squatted before the troughs men and women mashed the
_ma_ for the _popoi_, or idled on the platform in red and yellow
_pareus_, watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be
poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no
sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the
whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch
which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only remnants
of the native architecture.
As I drew nearer, I saw that I had stumbled upon such a house as the
Marquesan had known in the days of his strength, when pride of
artistry had created wonderful and beautiful structures of native
wood adorned in elegant and curious patterns.
It was erected upon a _paepae_ about ten feet high, reached by a
broad and smooth stairway of similar massive black rocks. The house,
long and narrow, covered all of the _paepae_ but a veranda in front,
the edge of which was fenced with bamboo ingeniously formed into
patterns of squares. A friendly call of "_Kaoha!_" in response to
mine, summoned me to the family meeting-place, and I mounted the
steps with eagerness.
I was met by a stalwart and handsome savage, in earrings and
necklace and scarlet _pareu_, who rubbed my nose with his and
smelled me ceremoniously, welcoming me as an honored guest. Several
women followed his example, while naked children ran forward
curiously to look at the stranger.
Learning the interest and admiration I felt for his house, my host
displayed it with ill-concealed pride. Its frame was of the
largest-sized bamboos standing upright, and faced with hibiscus
strips, all lashed handsomely and strongly with _faufee_ cordage.
Upon this framework were set the walls, constructed of canes arranged
in a delicate pattern, the fastenings being of _purau_ or other
rattan-like creepers, all tied neatly and regularly. As the
residence was only about a dozen feet deep, through three times that
length, these walls were not only attractive but eminently
serviceable, the canes shading the interior, and the interstices
between them admitting ample light and air.
We entered through a low opening and found the one long chamber
spacious, cool, and perfumed with the forest odors. There were no
furnishings save two large and brilliantly polished cocoanut-tree
trunks running the whole length of the interior, and between them
piles of mats of many designs and of every bright hue that roots and
herbs will yield.
While I admired these, noting their rich colors and soft, yet firm,
texture, a murmurous rustle on the palm-thatched roof announced the
coming of the rain. It was unthinkable to my host that a stranger
should leave his house at nightfall, and in a downpour that might
become a deluge before morning. To have refused his invitation had
been to leave a pained and bewildered household.
_Popoi_ bowls and wooden platters of the roasted breadfruit were
brought within shelter, and while the hissing rain put out the fires
on the _paepae_ the candlenuts were lighted and all squatted for the
evening meal. Breadfruit and yams, with a draught of cocoanut milk,
satisfied the hunger created by my arduous climb. Then the women
carried away the empty bowls while my host and I lay upon the mats
and smoked, watching the gray slant of the rain through the
darkening twilight.
Few houses like his remained on Hiva-Oe, he said in reply to my
compliments. The people loved the ways of the whites and longed for
homes of redwood planks and roofs of iron. For himself, he loved the
ways of his fathers, and though yielding as he must to the payments
of taxes and the authority of new laws, he would not toil in the
copra-groves or work on traders' ships. His father had been a
warrior of renown. The _u'u_ was wielded no more, being replaced by
the guns of the whites. The old songs were forgotten. But he, who
had traveled far, who had seen the capital of the world, Tahiti, and
had learned much of the ways of the foreigner, would have none of
them. He would live as his fathers had lived, and die as they had
died.
"It is not long. We vanish like the small fish before the hunger of
the _mako_. The High Places are broken, and the _pahue_ covers our
_paepaes_. It does not matter. _E tupu te fau; e toro to farero, e
mou te taata._ The hibiscus shall grow, the coral shall spread, and
man shall cease. There is sleep on your eyelids, and the mats are
ready."
His hospitality would give me the place of honor, despite my protests,
and soon I found myself lying between my host and his wife, while
the other members of the household lay in serried rank beyond her on
the mats that filled the hollow between the palm-trunks. All slept
with the backs of their heads upon one timber, and the backs of
their knees over the other, but I found comfort on the soft pile
between them. My companions slumbered peacefully, as I have remarked
that men do in all countries where the people live near, and much in,
the sea. There was no snoring or groaning, no convulsive movement of
arms or legs, no grimaces or frowns such as mark the fitful sleep of
most city dwellers and of all of us who worry or burn the candle at
both ends.
I lay listening for some time to their quiet breathing and the sound
of rain drumming on the thatch, but at last my eyes closed, and only
the dawn awoke me.
[Illustration: Splitting cocoanut husks in copra making process]
[Illustration: Cutting the meat from cocoanuts to make copra]