The household of Lam Kai Oo; copra making; marvels of the
cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that knows the
laws of gravitation.
Next morning, after bidding farewell to my hosts, I set out down the
mountain in the early freshness of a sunny, rain-washed morning. I
followed a trail new to me, a path steep as a stairway, walled in by
the water-jeweled jungle pressing so close upon me that at times I
saw the sky only through the interlacing fronds of the tree-ferns
above my head.
I had gone perhaps a mile without seeing any sign of human habitation,
hearing only the conversation of the birds and the multitudinous
murmuring of leaves, when a heavy shower began to fall. Pressing on,
hampered by my clinging garments and slipping in the path that had
instantly become a miniature torrent, I came upon a little clearing
in which stood a dirty, dark shanty, like a hovel in the outskirts
of Canton, not raised on a _paepae_ but squat in an acre of mud and
the filth of years.
Two children, three or four years old, played naked in the muck, and
Flower, of the red-gold hair, reputed the wickedest woman in the
Marquesas, ironed her gowns on the floor of the porch. Raising her
head, she called to me to come in.
This was the house of Lam Kai Oo, the adopted father of Flower.
Seventy-one years old, Lam Kai Oo had made this his home since he
left the employ of Captain Hart, the unfortunate American cotton
planter, and here he had buried three native wives. His fourth, a
woman of twenty years, sat in the shelter of a copra shed nursing a
six-months' infant. Her breasts were dark blue, almost black, a
characteristic of nursing mothers here.
Both the mother and Flower argued with me that I should make Many
Daughters my wife during my stay in Atuona, and if not the leper lass,
then another friend they had chosen for me. Flower herself had done
me the honor of proposing a temporary alliance, but I had persuaded
her that I was not worthy of her beauty and talents. Any plea that
it was not according to my code, of even that it was un-Christian,
provoked peals of laughter from all who heard it; sooth to say, the
whites laughed loudest.
Beneath a thatch of palm-leaves Lam Kai Oo was drying cocoanuts. His
withered yellow body straddled a kind of bench, to which was fixed a
sharp-pointed stick of iron-wood. Seizing each nut in his claw-like
hands, he pushed it against this point, turning and twisting it as
he ripped off the thick and fibrous husk. Then he cracked each nut
in half with a well-directed blow of a heavy knife. For the best
copra-making, the half-nuts should be placed in the sun, concave
side up. As the meats begin to dry, they shrink away from the shell
and are readily removed, being then copra, the foundation of the
many toilet preparations, soaps and creams, that are made from
cocoa-oil.
As it rains much in the Marquesas, the drying is often done in ovens,
though sun-dried copra commands a higher price. Lam Kai Oo was
operating such an oven, a simple affair of stones cemented with mud,
over which had been erected a shed of palm-trunks and thatch. The
halved cocoanuts were placed in cups made of mud and laid on wooden
racks above the oven. With the doors closed, a fire was built in the
stone furnace and fed from the outside with cocoa-husks and brush.
Such an oven does not dry the nuts uniformly. The smoke turns them
dark, and oil made from them contains undesirable creosote.
Hot-water pipes are the best source of heat, except the sun,
but Lam Kai Oo was paying again for his poverty, as the poor
man must do the world over.
Forty-four years earlier he had left California, after having given
seven years of his life to building American railways. The smoke of
the Civil War had hardly cleared away when Captain Hart had
persuaded him, Ah Yu and other California Chinese to come to Hiva-oa,
and put their labor into his cotton plantations. Cannibalism was
common at that date. I asked the old man if he had witnessed it.
"My see plenty fella eatee," he replied. "Kanaka no likee Chineeman.
Him speak bad meatee."
He told me how on one occasion the Lord had saved him from drowning.
With a lay brother of the Catholic Mission, he had been en route to
Vait-hua in a canoe with many natives. There was to be a church feast,
and Lam Kai Oo was carrying six hundred Chile _piastres_ to back his
skill against the natives in gambling; Lam, of course, to operate
the wheel of supposed chance.
The boat capsized in deep water. The lay brother could not swim, but
was lifted to the keel of the upturned boat, while the others clung
to its edges. He prayed for hours, while the others, lifting their
faces above the storming waves, cried hearty amens to his
supplications. Finally the waves washed them into shallow water. The
brother gave earnest thanks for deliverance, but Lam thought that
the same magic should give him back the six hundred pieces of silver
that had gone into the sea.
"My savee plenty Lord helpee you," said he. "Allee samee, him hell
to live when poor. Him Lord catchee Chile money, my givee fitty
dolla churchee."
He sighed despairingly, and fed more cocoa-husks to his make-shift
oven. The shower had passed, moving in a gray curtain down the valley,
and picking my way through the mire of the yard, I followed it in
the sunshine.
My way led now through the cocoanut-groves that day and night make
the island murmurous with their rustling. They are good company,
these lofty, graceful palms, and I had grown to feel a real
affection for them, such as a man has for his dog. Like myself, they
can not live and flourish long unless they see the ocean. Their
habit has more tangible reason than mine; they are dependent on air
and water for life. The greater the column of water that flows daily
up their stems and evaporates from the leaves, the greater the
growth and productivity.
Evaporation being in large measure dependent on free circulation of
air, the best sites for cocoanut plantations are on the seashore,
exposed to the winds. They love the sea and will grow with their
boles dipped at high tide in the salt water.
These trunks, three feet in diameter at the base and tapering
smoothly and perfectly to perhaps twelve inches at the top, are in
reality no more than pipes for conveying the water to the thirsty
fronds. Cut them open, and one finds a vast number of hollow reeds,
held together by a resinous pitch and guarded by a bark both thick
and exceedingly hard. There is no branch or leaf except at the very
tip of the trunk, where a symmetrical and gigantic bouquet of leaves
appears, having plumes a dozen feet long or more, that nod with every
zephyr and in storms sway and lash the tree as if they were living
things.
I used to wonder why these great leaves, the sport of the idlest
breeze as well as the fiercest gale, were not torn from the tree,
but when I learned to know the cocoanut palm as a dear friend I
found that nature had provided for its survival on the wind-swept
beaches with the same exquisite attention to individual need that is
shown in the electric batteries and lights of certain fishes, or in
the caprification of the fig. A very fine, but strong, matting,
attached to the bark beneath the stalk, fastened half way around the
tree and reaching three feet up the leaf, fixes it firmly to the
trunk but gives it ample freedom to move. It is a natural brace,
pliable and elastic.
There is scarcely a need of the islander not supplied by these
amiable trees. Their wood makes the best spars, furnishes rafters
and pillars for native houses, the knee- and head-rests of their beds,
rollers for the big canoes or whale-boats, fences against wild pig,
and fuel. The leaves make screens and roofs of dwellings, baskets,
and coverings, and in the pagan temples of Tahiti were the rosaries
or prayer-counters, while on their stiff stalks the candlenuts are
strung to give light for feasts or for feasting. When the tree is
young the network that holds the leaves is a beautiful silver, as
fine as India paper and glossy; narrow strips of it are used as hair
ornaments and contrast charmingly with the black and shining locks
of the girls. When older, this matting has every appearance of
coarse cotton cloth, and is used to wrap food, or is made into bags
and even rough garments, specially for fishermen.
The white flowers are small and grow along a branching stalk,
protected by a sheath, and just above the commencement of the leaf.
From them is made the cocoanut-brandy that enables the native to
forget his sorrows. Flowers and nuts in every stage of development
are on the same tree, a year elapsing between the first blossom and
the ripe nut. Long before it is ripe, but after full size has been
attained, the nut contains a pint or even a quart of delicious juice,
called milk, water, or wine, in different languages. It is clear as
spring water, of a delicate acidity, yet sweet, and no idea of its
taste can be formed from the half-rancid fluid in the ripe nuts sold
in Europe or America. It must be drunk soon after being taken from
the tree to know its full delights, and must have been gathered at
the stage of growth called _koie_, when there is no pulp within the
shell.
Not long after this time the pulp, white as snow, of the consistency
and appearance of the white of a soft-boiled egg, forms in a thin
layer about the walls of the nut. This is a delicious food, and from
it are made many dishes, puddings, and cakes. It is no more like the
shredded cocoanut of commerce than the peach plucked from the tree
is like the tinned fruit.
The pulp hardens and thickens as time goes on, and finally is an
inch in thickness. Occasionally the meat when hard and ripe is
broiled and eaten. I like it fairly well served in this fashion.
If left on the tree, the nut will in time fall, and in due course
there begins in it a marvelous process of germination. A sweet,
whitish sponge forms in the interior, starting from the inner end of
the seed enclosed in the kernel, opposite one of the three eyes in
the smaller end of the nut. This sponge drinks up all the liquid, and,
filling the inside, melts the hard meat, absorbs it, and turns it
into a cellular substance, while a white bud, hard and powerful,
pushes its way through one of the eyes of the shell, bores through
several inches of husk, and reaches the air and light.
This bud now unfolds green leaves, and at the same period two other
buds, beginning at the same point, find their way to the two other
eyes and pierce them, turning down instead of up, and forcing their
way through the former husk outside the shell, enter the ground.
Though no knife could cut the shell, the life within bursts it open,
and husk and shell decay and fertilize the soil beside the new roots,
which, within five or six years, have raised a tree eight or nine
feet high, itself bearing nuts to reproduce their kind again.
All about me on the fertile soil, among decaying leaves and
luxuriant vines, I saw these nuts, carrying on their mysterious and
powerful life in the unheeded forest depths. Here and there a
half-domestic pig was harrying one with thrusting snout. These pigs,
which we think stupid, know well that the sun will the sooner cause
a sprouting nut to break open, and they roll the fallen nut into the
sunlight to hasten their stomachs' gratification, though with
sufficient labor they can get to the meat with their teeth.
There is a crab here, too, that could teach even the wisest,
sun-employing pig some tricks in economics. He is the last word in
adaptation to environment, with an uncanny knowledge that makes the
uninformed look askance at the tale-teller. These crabs climb
cocoanut-trees to procure their favorite food. They dote on cocoanuts,
the ripe, full-meated sort. They are able to enjoy them by various
endeavors demanding strength, cleverness, an apparent understanding
of the effect of striking an object against a harder one, and of the
velocity caused by gravity. Nuts that resist their attempts to open
them, they carry to great heights, to drop them and thus break their
shells.
These crabs are called by the scientists _Birgos latro_, by the
Marquesans _tupa_, by the Paumotans _kaveu_, and by the Tahitians,
_ua vahi haari_. It was a never-failing entertainment on my walks
in the Paumotas to observe these great creatures, light-brown or
reddish in color, more than two feet in length, stalking about with
their bodies a foot from the ground, supported by two pairs of
central legs. They can exist at least twenty-four hours without
visiting the water, of which they carry a supply in reservoirs on
both sides of the cephalothorax, keeping their gills moist.
[Illustration: A Marquesan home on a _paepae_]
[Illustration: Isle of Barking Dogs]
They live in large deep burrows in the cocoanut-groves, which they
fill with husks, so that the natives often rob them to procure a
quick supply of fuel. These dens are contrived for speedy entry when
pursued. Terrifying as they appear when surprised on land, they
scuttle for safety either to a hole or to the sea, with an agility
astounding in a creature so awkward in appearance. Though they may
be seen about at all hours of the day, they make forays upon the
cocoanuts only at night.
Darwin first saw these creatures in the Indian Ocean, and said that
they seek the sea every night to moisten their branchiae. The young
are hatched and live for some time on the sea-coast, venturing far
from water only as they grow older. Darwin said that their feat in
entering the cocoanut "is as curious a case of instinct as was ever
heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two
objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature,
as a crab and a cocoanut-tree."
When darkness descends and all is quiet, the robber crab ascends the
tree by gripping the bark with his claws. The rays of my electric
flash-light have often caught him high over my head against the gray
palm. Height does not daunt him. He will go up till he reaches the
nuts, if it be a hundred feet. With his powerful nippers he severs
the stem, choosing always a nut that is big and ripe. Descending the
palm, he tears off the fibrous husk, which, at first thought, it
would seem impossible for him to do. He tears it fiber by fiber, and
always from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated.
With these exposed, he begins hammering on one of them until he has
enlarged the opening so that he can insert one of the sharp points
of his claw into it. By turning his claw backward and forward he
scoops out the meat and regales himself luxuriously.
This is his simplest method, along the line of least resistance, but
let the nut be refractory, and he seizes it by the point of a claw
and beats it against a rock until he smashes it. This plan failing,
he will carry the stubborn nut to the top of the tree again and hurl
it to the earth to crack it. And if at first he does not succeed, he
will make other trips aloft with the husked nut, dropping it again
and again until at last it is shattered and lies open to his claws.
It is said that if a drop of oil be placed on the long and delicate
antennae of these crabs they die almost instantly. We have a
somewhat similar rumor with respect to salt and a bird's tail.
Seldom does a robber crab linger to be oiled, and so other means of
destroying him, or, at least, of guarding against his depredations,
are sought. With the rat, who bites the flower and gnaws the young
nuts, this crab is the principal enemy of the planter. The tree
owner who can afford it, nails sheets of tin or zinc around the tree
a dozen feet from the earth. Neither rat nor crab can pass this
slippery band, which gives no claw-hold. Thousands of trees are thus
protected, but usually these are in possession of white men, for tin
is costly and the native is poor.
The ingenious native, however, employs another means of saving the
fruit of his groves. He climbs the palm-trunk in the daytime, and
forty feet above the ground encircles it with dirt and leaves. On
his mat for the night's slumber, he smiles to think of the revenge
he shall have. For the crab ascends and passes the puny barrier to
select and fell his nuts, but when in his backward way he descends,
he forgets the curious bunker he went over and, striking it again,
thinks he has reached the ground. He lets go, and smashes on the
rocks his crafty foe has piled below.