A journey over the roof of the world to Oomoa; an encounter with a
wild woman of the hills.
Père Olivier tried to dissuade me from walking back to Oomoa, and
offered me his horse, but I determined to go afoot and let Orivie, a
native youth, be my mounted guide. Orivie is named for Père Olivier;
there being no "l" in the Marquesan language, the good priest's name
is pronounced as if spelled in English Oreeveeay.
The horse, the usual small, tough mountain-pony, was caught, and
upon him we strapped the saddle with cow-skin stirrups, hairy and big,
and a rope bridle. Orivie, handsomely dressed in wrinkled denim
trousers, a yellow _pareu_ and an aged straw hat, mounted the beast,
and bidding farewell to the friends I had made, we began to climb
the trail through the village.
At each of the dozen houses we passed I had to stop and say _Kaoha_
to the occupants. In these islands there is none of that coldness
toward the casual passer-by which is common in America, where one
may walk through the tiniest village and receive no salutation unless
the village constable sees a fee in arresting the wayfarer for not
having money or a job. All the elders were tattooed, and as every
island and even every valley differed in its style of skin decoration,
these people had new patterns and pictures of interest to me. I made
it a point to linger a little before each house, praising the
appearance of these tattooed old people, both because it pleased
them and because it is a pity that this national art expression
should die out at the whim of whites who substitute nothing for it.
By this deprivation, as by a dozen others, the Marquesans have been
robbed of racial pride and clan distinction, and their social life
destroyed.
Despite this delay, Orivie and I were soon past the houses. As
population has decreased in all the valleys the people have moved
down from the upper heights to districts nearer the sea, for
neighborliness and convenience. Only a few in some places have
remained in the further glens, and these are the non-conformists, who
retain yet their native ways of thought and living and their ancient
customs. This I knew, but I pursued my way behind the climbing
little horse, enjoying the many sights and perfumes of the jungle,
in happy ignorance of an experience soon to befall me with one of
these residents of the heights. It fell upon me suddenly, the most
embarrassing of several experiences that have divided me between
fear and laughter.
Perhaps a mile above the village, in a wilderness of shrubbery, trees,
and giant ferns, we came upon a cross-trail, a thin line of travel
hardly breaking the dense growth, and saw a woman appear from among
the leaves. She was large, perhaps five feet, ten inches, tall; a
Juno figure, handsome and lithe. Such a woman of her age, about
twenty-two years, does the work of a man, makes copra, fells trees,
lifts heavy stones, and is a match for the average man in strength.
She was dark, as are all Marquesans who live a hardy and vigorous
life unsheltered from sun and wind, and in the half shadow of the
forest she seemed like an animal, wild and savage. Her scarlet
_pareu_ and necklace of red peppers added color to a picture that
struck me at once as bizarre and memorable.
The horse had passed her, and turning about in the saddle Orivie
replied to her greeting, while I added a courteous "_Kaoha!_" She
looked at me with extraordinary attention, which I ascribed to my
white ducks and traveling cap, while she asked who I was. Orivie
replied that I was a stranger on my way over the mountains. She
advanced into the main trail then, letting slip from her shoulders a
weight of packages, tea, and other groceries, and suddenly embraced
me, smelling my face and picking me up in a bear hug that, startled
as I was, nearly choked me.
"Take care!" cried Orivie, in a tone between alarm and amusement. I
backed hastily away, and sought to take refuge beside a boulder, but
she vaulted after me, and seizing me again, resumed her passionate
attack.
"She is a woman of the mountains! She will take you away to her
_paepae_!" my excited guide yelled warningly.
That was her intention. There was no doubt about it. She seized me
by the arm and tried to drag me away from the boulder to which I
clung. For several moments I was engaged in a struggle more sincere
than chivalrous on my part and ardently demonstrative on hers. But
as I absolutely would not accede to her desire to give me a home in
the hills, she was forced to give up hope after a final embrace,
which I ended rudely, but scientifically. Rising to her feet again,
she picked up her burden, which must have weighed fully a hundred
pounds, and went her way.
"She is a _hinenao pu_," said Orivie. That means literally a coquette
without reason. I did not seek for double meaning in the remark, but
expressed my opinion of all _hinenaos_ as I replaced my cap and
readjusted my garments.
"These women of the heights are all like that," said my guide.
"They have no sense and no shame. If they see a stranger near their
home, they will seize him, as men do women. If they are in the mood,
they will not take no for an answer. It has always been their custom,
as that of the hill men capturing the valley women. It is shameful,
but it has never changed. She would give you food and treat you with
kindness as a man does his bride. You know, in the old days the
strong women had more than one husband; sometimes four or five, and
they chose them in this way. If you were nearer where Tepu lives,
she would make you a prisoner. They have often done that."
"Do we go near her home?" said I.
"No; we see no more _paepaes_," replied Orivie.
"Then," I said, "let us hasten onward."
We mounted at every foot, and soon were above the cocoanuts. The
trail was a stream interspersed with rocks, for in these steep
accents the path, worn lower than its borders, becomes in the rainy
season the natural bed of the trickle or torrent that runs to the
valley. The horse leaped from rock to rock, planting his back feet
and springing upward to a perch, upon which he hung until he got
balance for another leap. I followed the animal, knowing him wiser
in such matters than I. From time to time Orivie urged me to ride
and when I refused gave me the knowing look bestowed upon the witless,
the glance of the asylum-keeper upon the lunatic who thinks himself
a billiard ball.
We were soon so high that I saw below only a big basin, in which was
a natural temple, the vast ruin of a gigantic minster, it seemed,
and across the basin a rugged, saw-like profile of the mountain-top.
Eons ago the upper valley was a volcano, when the island of
Fatu-hiva was under the sea. Once the fire burst through the crater
side toward the present beach, and after the explosion there was
left a massive gateway of rock, through which we had come from the
village. Towering so high that they were hardly perceptible when we
had been beside them, they showed from this height their whole
formation, like the wrecked walls of a stupendous basilica.
Up and up we went. The way was steeper than any mountain I have ever
climbed, except the sheer sides of chasms where ropes are necessary,
or the chimneys of narrow defiles. I have climbed on foot Vesuvius,
Halaakela, Kilauea, Fuji, and Mayon, and the mountains of America,
Asia, and South America, though I know nothing by trial of the
terrors of the Alps. However, the horse could and did go up the steep,
though it taxed him to the utmost, and these horses are like
mountain-goats, for there is hardly any level land in the Marquesas.
[Illustration: Catholic Church at Hanavave
Frère Fesal on left, Père Olivier on right]
[Illustration: A canoe in the surf at Oomoa]
Unexpectedly, the sea came in view, with the Catholic church and its
white belfry, but in another turn it disappeared. I fell again and
again; the horse floundered among the stones in the trough and fell,
too, Orivie seizing trees or bushes that lined the banks to save
himself. Rocks as large as hundred-ton vessels were on the
mountainside above, held from falling only by small rocks interposed,
feeble obstacles to an avalanche. Beetling precipices overhung the
village. I thought they might fall at any moment, and the Marquesans
recount many such happenings. In Tai-o-hae three hundred natives
were entombed forever by a landslide, and Orivie pointed out the
tracks of such slides, and immense masses of rock in the far depths
below, beside strips of soft soil brought down by the rains.
The wild guava and the thorny _keoho_, the taro, the pandanus and
the banian, all the familiar and useful trees and plants were left
behind. We toiled onward in a wilderness of stone.
I climbed around the edge of a precipice, and stood above the sea.
The blue ocean, as I looked downward, was directly under my eyes,
and I could see the fishing canoes like chips on the water. It was a
thousand feet straight down; the standing-place was but three feet
wide, wet and slippery. The mighty trade-wind swept around the crags
and threatened to dislodge me.
That demoniacal impulse to throw oneself from a height took
possession of me. Almost a physical urging of the body, as if some
hidden Mephistopheles not only poured into the soul his hellish
advice to end your life, but pushed you to the brink. As never
before the evil desire to fall from that terrible height attacked me,
and the world became a black dizziness. Struggling, I threw out my
hand; the unconscious grip upon a stunted fern, itself no barrier
against falling, gave me a mental grip upon myself, and the crisis
was passed.
On hands and knees I crept around the ledge, for the wind was a gale,
and a slip of a foot might mean a drop of a fifth of a mile.
The next valley, Tapaatea, came in view, and Hanavave a cleft in the
mountains, the stream a silver cord. A cascade gleamed on the
opposite side against the Namana hills. It is Vaieelui, the youth
Orivie informed me, as we went higher, still on the dangerous ledge
that binds the seaward precipice. All the valleys converged to a
point, and nothing below was distinct.
Higher we went, and were level with the jagged ridge of the Faeone
mountains toward the north, and could look through the pierced
mountain, Laputa; through the hole, _tehavaiinenao_, that is like a
round window to the sky, framed in black, about which legends are
raised. Orivie smiled indulgently as I explained to him that that
hole was made by sea-currents when Laputa was under the ocean. He
knew that a certain warrior, half god and half man, threw his spear
through the mountain once upon a time.
We came then to the veriest pitch of the journey, like the roof of
the world, and it was necessary to crawl about another ledge that
permitted a perpendicular view of 2500 feet, so desperate in its
attraction that had I known the name of that saint who is the patron
of alpenstock buyers I would have offered him an _ave_. This was the
apex. Once safely past it, the trail went downward to a plateau.
I caught up with Orivie and the horse, and my muscles so rejoiced at
the change of motion in descent that almost involuntarily I took a
few steps of a jig and uttered the first verses of "I Only Had Fifty
Cents." Mosses and ferns by the billion covered every foot of the
small plateau. There were no trees. The trail was a foot deep in
water, like an irrigation ditch. One still might easily break one's
neck. And I reflected that Père Olivier crosses many times a year
between Oomoa and Hanavave, in his black soutan and on his weary
horse, in all weathers, alone; it is a fact to treasure for
recalling when one hears all missionaries included in the accusation
of selfishness that springs so often to the lips of many men.
We reached the plane of cocoanuts, and I asked Orivie to fetch down
a couple, after essaying to perform that feat myself and failing
dismally besides scratching my nose and hands. Bare feet are a
requisite--bare and tough as leather. The Marquesans cut notches in
the trees after they reach maturity, to make the climbing easier, a
custom they have in many parts of Asia, but not in Tahiti. These
footholds are made every three feet on opposite sides. They are cut
shallowly, inclining downward and outward, in order not to wound the
wood of the tree or to form pockets in which water would collect and
rot it. With these aids they climb with ease, using a rope of
_purau_ bark tied about the wrists, and by these they pull
themselves from notch.
I have seen a child of six years reach the top of a sixty-foot tree
in a minute or so, and I have seen a man or woman stop on the way,
fifty feet from the earth, and light a cigarette. Slim, fat, chiefs
or commoners, all learn this knack in infancy. Men who puff along
the road because of their bulk will attain the branches of a palm
with the agility of monkeys.
Orivie had no notches to assist him, but tied his ankles together
with a piece of tough vine, leaving about ten inches of play, and
with this band, pressed tightly against the tree, giving firm
support while his arms, clasping the trunk above, drew him upward a
yard at a time, he was at the crest of a fifty-foot tree in a minute,
and threw down two drinking nuts. They were as big as foot-balls and
weighed about five pounds each. We had no knife, but broke in the
tops with stones, and holding up the shining green nuts, let the
wine flow down our throats. Never was a better thirst-quencher or
heartener! The hottest noon on the hottest beach, when the coral
burns the feet, this nectar is cool. After the most arduous climb,
when lungs and muscles ache with weariness, it freshens strength and
lifts the spirit.
By the cocoanut-grove ran a level stream shaded with pandanus, and
following it, we commenced again to mount on a pathway arched by
small trees, down which the stream coursed. The cocoanuts fell away
as we went up the ridge and emerged upon a tableland covered with
ferns, some green and some dead and dry, carpeting the flat expanse
as far as eye could see with a mat of lavender, the green and the
brown melting into that soft color.
We were further on the broad roof on the mountains, in the middle
now and not on the edge, so we ran and galloped and shouted. Wild
horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern
thickets. The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with
magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the _huetu_, the
immense mountain plantain, called _fei_ in Tahiti, where they are
the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as
a man. Feeders of dark people in many lands for thousands of years,
theirs is the same golden fruit I had eaten at breakfast with Père
Olivier, three thousand feet below. They grow only in the mountains,
and the men who bring them into the villages have feet shaped like a
hand spread out to its widest, with toes twisted curiously by
climbing rocks and grasping roots for support.
The rain began to fall again, and the wind came stronger, but now we
were going down in earnest. The sea shone again, but it was on the
Oomoa side. We passed under trees hung with marvelous orchids, the
_puaauetaha_, Orivie said, parasitic vines related to the vanilla
as the lion is related to the kitten, cousins, but with little
family likeness.
The trail became very dangerous at this point, a rocky slide, with
steps a foot or two apart like uneven stairs, and all a foot, or
sometimes two, under running water. I jumped and slid and slipped,
following the unhappy plunging horse. Darkness came on quickly with
the blinding rain, and the descent was often at an angle of
forty-five degrees, over rocks, eroded hills, along the edge of a
precipice. I fell here, and saved myself by catching a root in the
trail and pulling myself up again. I would have dropped upon the roof
of the gendarme's house a thousand feet below.
We heard the sound of the surf, and letting the horse go, Orivie led
me, by that sense we surrender for the comforts of civilization,
down the bed of a cascade to the River of Oomoa, which we waded, and
then arrived at Grelet's house. We had come thirteen miles. I was
tired, but Orivie made nothing of the journey.
Covered with mud as I was, I went to the river and bathed in the
rain and, returning to the house, looked after my health. A half
ounce of rum, a pint of cocoanut-milk from a very young nut, the
juice of half a lime just from the tree, two lumps of sugar, and I
had an invigorating draught, long enough for a golf player after
thirty-six holes, and delicate enough for a debutante after her
first cotillion. The Paumotan boys and Pae looked on in horror,
saying that I was spoiling good rum.