names--Swayne's Island, Quiros, or Olesenga--a small, round, low island
surrounding a triangular brackish lagoon like an ornamental lake in a
park. It is inhabited by a half-caste man known as King Jennings, his
family, and about eighty people from different islands. The original
Jennings was an American who married a Samoan wife. He left Samoa in
a huff after having built a man-of-war for the government, for which
payment was refused. As the motive power of the ship came from wooden
paddle-wheels, turned with a crank by hand, it is hardly surprising
that the complaint of her extreme slowness and the great labour
involved in working her should have been brought forward as reasons
for non-payment. She had a complete armament of great guns and all the
equipments of a proper man-of-war. Jennings, in a fury of indignation
and disappointment, shook the dust of Samoa off his feet, and with his
wife and family set up a little kingdom of his own in Quiros. Here he
blew out a passage through the reef, built two schooners of island
wood, floated them off with barrels, and sold them to the German firm
at Samoa.
A flag was hoisted on Quiros, the stars and stripes, with what appeared
to be a dove in the field. We asked with some curiosity what the
dove indicated. They told us that a night-bird came and cried about
the settlement for months; this was supposed to bode sickness; so to
propitiate the ill-omened bird it was added to the flag.
There is a good road on the island, excellent houses, a church, and a
schoolhouse containing an imported half-caste schoolmaster. From a tall
building used for storing copra men were already laying a temporary
wooden track down to the landing for the copra trucks to run upon. This
busy scene was brought to an end by Mr. Henderson's information that he
would not take in cargo until our return voyage. This is a rich, low
island with plenty of soil, and is said to bring in a very comfortable
revenue, which might be still larger did King Jennings care to make it
so.
Mr. Henderson and Louis went on shore; while they were away I tried
to make a Mexican sauce, called _salsa_, with the chillis from Samoa
and the onions from the Nuieue graves. The chillis burned my hands
dreadfully, and the sauce turned out to be too hot to be used except as
a flavouring for soups, for which it was excellent.
Mr. Henderson and Louis came back with some return labour boys for
Danger Island. One who had signed to serve five years had been waiting
another three for a vessel to take him home. He was once disappointed,
and nearly died of it. I am thankful he had this opportunity.[7] I can
see a horse eating grass on the island, and Louis has seen a carriage.
[7] The "labour boys" do, sometimes, die of homesickness. A black
boy called Arriki whom we hired from the German firm, did so die
after we left Samoa. The man to whom he was assigned by the German
firm told me that both Arriki and a friend of his began to droop and
become sullen, and then went quite mad; soon after they died at
about the same time from no apparent disease, but he said he knew
the symptoms--"just plain homesickness for a cannibal island."
Arriki, in a moment of confidence, once described to me his life in
his own land. It seemed to consist of flight from one unsafe spot to
another, with death hunting on every hand. Both his father and mother
had been killed and eaten, with the most of his friends; and yet
Arriki died of homesickness.
_4th._--Ran through a light squall in the night and sighted Danger
Island at four in the morning. At the first landing is a place in the
reef where people upset in boats are sucked under, never to be seen
again. Our Quiros passengers are in a wild state of excitement; ladies
on the after hatch slipping on their clean shifts, and the comb going
from hand to hand. The eight-year exile clutched Louis's hand, and
in a voice trembling with emotion ejaculated "coco nuk." As we drew
nearer the three islands of the group began to detach themselves.
Danger Island, or Pukapuka, is the only one inhabited. It is governed
by a king who allows none of his subjects to gather cocoanuts without
his royal permission, and as he seldom lets any one have more than is
sufficient for his food, very little copra is made. Here the nuts,
contrary to the usual custom, are dried in the shell to prevent
cockroaches from devouring the meat, and consequently the copra is very
fine and white; but the quantity made is so small that it does not pay
to keep a trader on the island.
* * * * *
We could see the natives gathering on the beach in great force. They
seemed thunderstruck at the sight of a vessel with furled sails moving
so rapidly against a strong head wind, the _Janet_ being the first
steamer that had touched at Pukapuka. As soon as our passengers were
recognised, a joyful shout ran up and down the beach, and, canoes were
launched and paddled out to meet us. When they were just abreast of us
Captain Henry blew the steam-whistle. The natives were appalled; every
paddle stopped short, and the crowds on the beach seemed stricken to
stone. Our Pukapuka passengers tried to encourage the people in the
canoes to come nearer, calling to them from the deck of the ship, but
it was some time before they took heart and resumed their paddling. The
King, a shabbily clad man of rather mean appearance, was among them.
The meeting between the long-parted friends was very pretty and
touching. I like their mode of showing affection better than ours. They
took hands and pressed their faces together lightly with a delicate
sniff, as I have often seen a white mother caress her baby. One elderly
woman, I was sorry to see, had bad news; she looked very sorrowful,
and when a young boy came up to greet her she threw her arms round him
and wept aloud. All the rest, however, were sparkling with excitement
and joy. The sheep, which the strangers saw for the first time, were
studied with much interest. A group of middle-aged, respectable men
stood off at some distance and whistled to the sheep as though they
were dogs; getting no response, they ventured a little nearer, when one
of the sheep happened to move. The crowd fell back in dire confusion,
and one man who had been in the van, but now occupied a rear position,
asked in a trembling voice if the bite of those animals was very
dangerous.
Before our passengers left us, each shook hands with all on board and
bade us farewell; they said "good-bye, sir," to Louis and "good-bye,
mister," to me. As they paddled away I took out my handkerchief and
waved it. One woman, the proud possessor of a handkerchief of her own,
waved hers in reply and kept it up until I, at least, was tired. I like
to think of the pleasant evening at Pukapuka, the gossip, the news,
the passing of presents, and the exhibition of treasures and foreign
curiosities.
_6th._--Sighted Manihiki at half past twelve, an outlying, low coral
island with enclosed lagoon, very thinly wooded with cocoa-palms and
pandanus trees.
Quiros, the first Spanish navigator of the Pacific, gave to an island
the name "Gente Hermosa" (Beautiful People), which has always been
ascribed to Olesenga or Quiros Island; but since the memory of man
Quiros has been uninhabited until the advent of the American Jennings.
It is very possible that the navigator meant Manihiki, or its
neighbouring island Rakahoa, as the isle of beautiful people. It is
significant that Manihiki is always conspicuously marked on even the
smallest maps of the world, no doubt from the fact that its delightful
people have attracted so much attention from seamen that the place
has acquired an artificial importance out of all proportion to its few
square miles of reef.
The regular diet of the Manihikians is composed almost entirely of
cocoanuts. The pandanus seeds are boiled and chewed, but never made
into foodstuff as is done in the Gilberts. There are pigs and fowls
in abundance, but these are only killed on great occasions, such as
marriages or deaths. Sucking pigs are not killed, but only large ones,
the larger the better. There are no white women on Manihiki, and but
three white men--an absconding produce-merchant, a runaway marine, and
a young Englishman who was wrecked on a neighbouring island. These
men live on the bounty of the natives, and though they dislike eating
copra, or "cocoanut steak," as it is called, they seem to thrive very
well upon it.
We landed on the beach as there was no entrance to the lagoon. The
aspect of the reef was not very reassuring as we rowed toward it,
but our men took us through a narrow, tortuous passage, and in a few
minutes we were shaking hands and exchanging salutations with the
natives, a pleasant, smiling crowd with many beautiful children. We
were delighted to find that we had arrived at a most interesting
period, that of the yearly jubilee. No one could tell us how this
institution, which is known in other islands besides Manihiki, first
arose. For one week out of every year all laws are held in abeyance,
and the island gives itself up to hilarious enjoyment without fear of
consequences, singing, beating the cocoanut-wood drum, and dancing
according to the old heathen customs. At any other time the punishment
for heathen dances is most severe.
[Illustration: _The King of Manihiki in the centre, with the Island
Judge on his right and Tin Jack, seated, on his left. The man squatting
in the foreground is one of the beach-combers._]
The three "beach-combers" were all well dressed, in coats and trousers,
and very good-looking. One man said his present way of life "had an air
of loafing on the natives" which he disliked, but they all seemed proud
of their high position as whites, with the exception of the ex-marine,
who had fallen under the scorn of his companions for becoming
"kanaka-ised." Still, that they were under some subjection, we could
see, but owned themselves well used. They do not exactly _like_ copra,
but, as one said: "We have no right to complain; they give us what they
have." They had had no tobacco for months, which they felt a great
privation. When a ship comes in, the natives, men, women, and children,
often smoke the strong trade tobacco until they fall down insensible,
sometimes becoming convulsed as in epilepsy.
The trader, a half-caste, had already boarded the _Janet_ in a boat of
his own, but his wife, a stout, good-natured, sensible-looking woman,
was waiting on the beach to receive us. She at once took possession of
me as her right, and I was triumphantly swept off to her house, the
crowd at our heels; here we were regaled on cocoanuts, while all the
population who could crowd into the room gazed on us unwinking. The
windows, also, were filled, which cut off the air and made the place
rather suffocating. The children were made to sit down in the front row
so that the older people could see over their heads. One old woman made
me feel quite uncomfortable. Her eyes remained fixed, her jaw dropped,
and nothing for a single moment diverted her attention from what she
evidently regarded as a shocking and wonderful spectacle. Natives have
said that the first sight of white people is dreadful, as they look
like corpses walking. I have myself been startled by the sight of a
crowd of whites after having seen only brown-skinned people for a
long time. Louis has a theory that we whites were originally albinos.
Certainly we are not a nice colour. I remember as a child the words
"flesh colour" were sickening to me, and I could not bear to see them
in my paint-box.
The room was neat and clean, as were all the houses in the village.
Most of them contained a bedstead cut out of imported hardwood with a
spread of gay patchwork, and a mat-covered sofa, very high and wide.
In an inner room were great stacks of pearl shell, not, I should say,
of the very best quality, and much smaller than the law allows in the
Paumotus. The shell is gathered in the lagoon by native divers. Very
few pearls are found, probably because the shell is taken so young.
Leaving the trader's house, we started to cross the island, which is
very narrow; Louis thought about one hundred and fifty yards and I no
more than one hundred yards. On the way we passed a crowd of dancers,
ranged in two rows, the women on one side, the men on the other, in
front of the "speak-house." The dance was more like the Marquesans'
than we had ever seen. The European costumes in which most of the
people had dressed for our reception rather spoiled the effect, though
many wore wreaths and head-dresses made of dyed leaves. The native dyes
give beautiful, soft colours, yellow, red, and pink, which they also
use in hats and mats, some of the latter being exquisitely fine and as
pliant as cloth.
We found the lagoon of crystal clearness and dotted with little
islands. Numbers of small vessels were lying at anchor; no doubt they
had been collecting the shell. Though it was very lovely to look at,
we did not stay long on the borders of the lagoon, being driven away
by an ancient and fishlike smell. On our way back we went into the
church and the speak-house. In the speak-house, a very good building of
coral, were stocks which were used to punish malefactors. These stocks
consisted of a couple of ring-like handcuffs fastened, one above the
other, a foot from the ground, at the side of a post. The church, a
thatched coral building without flooring, was really beautiful. The
seats, with backs, are in rows, each with a fine, narrow mat spread
over it. On either side run galleries, the balustrades elaborately
carved and stained with yellow, red, and pink dyes. In the middle of
one balustrade the word "Zion" was carved. The pulpit was a mass of
carving and inlaid mother-of-pearl; the altar, which ran round it, was
covered with fringed mats extremely fine and flexible and worked in
different colours.
Among many others we made the acquaintance of a man who had been in
Samoa, blown there in a storm. There were with him one other man and
three little girls. It began to blow, he said, the sea rose very high,
and the air and sky grew black. Suddenly his boat capsized and "my
girls," he said, "swim--swim--swim in the sea." With their help he got
the boat righted and gathered up what he could of his cargo, green
cocoanuts and copra, and ran for Samoa. "Was any one frightened?" I
asked. "Only the other man," he said. We met two of his little girls;
one seemed clever and had picked up a little Samoan and a little
English while she was in Apia. We asked her name. "Anna," she proudly
answered. The other called herself Anna Maria.
Lloyd had photographed the King in his royal robes, a pair of white
duck trousers and a black velveteen coat; over all was worn a sort of
black cloth poncho bordered with gold fringe. Suspended from the neck
of royalty was a tinsel star and on his head a crown of red and white
pandanus leaves. Later in the evening he appeared in a pair of black
trousers and a frock coat. In common with his subjects, the King is
not of commanding stature. None of the islanders we have yet seen on
this cruise can compare with the Kingsmill people in haughty grace of
carriage, nor are they in any way so fine a race physically though most
charming in manner. After dinner, finding the trader's wife and the
missionary's wife having tea on deck, I gave them each a wreath, which
delighted them extremely. We hired a native boat to take us on shore
again for the evening; the man to whom the boat belonged begged us to
go to his house, but I wished first to take a present, a print dress,
to Anna.
Found Anna's house and gave my present. We were offered cocoanuts, to
our great embarrassment, but Louis fortunately thought of saying "paea"
(a rather vulgar Tahitian word signifying "I am full to repletion").
They understood at once and seemed greatly amused. Anna gave me a hat
of her own manufacture and then we went with the boatman to his house.
A party of young girls followed us, wrangling together as to which had
chosen me first. It seemed to be settled amicably, for one girl ran
up to me while the rest held back, and catching me by the hand said:
"You belong me." The boatman's wife, a sensible-looking woman with a
pathetic smile, was ill, he said; we were afterward told that she had
consumption. Again cocoanuts, and once more we got off with "paea."
When we left, the lady presented me with a large mat and a fine hat.
I had nothing with me to give in return, so took the wreath from my
own hat (I always wear one in case of an emergency) and also gave her
an orange (a rare luxury) I had in my pocket. I afterward sent her a
piece of print of the best quality. From the boatman's we went to the
speak-house, where the dancers were assembled. As we came out of the
bush toward the main road we heard a clapping of hollow sticks and
whelp-like cries; at intervals a sentence was shouted. It was curfew.
At eight o'clock several high officials parade the street, clapping
sticks together and crying out: "Remain within your houses." No one
obeys, but it is etiquette to keep off the main road when the officers
march. We saw that the people kept to the coral on either side, so we
did the same. When we first came on shore this evening, Louis, seeing
a little girl about four carrying a naked boy, patted him on the
shoulder; he howled, whereupon the little girl laughed and ran away. As
we waited for the procession to pass, the little girl came up behind
Louis in the darkness and, slipping her hand in his, nestled close to
him. Her name was Fani, also Etetera; she was neat as a little statue,
as tight as india-rubber; so was her sister; so was "Johnny Bull," who
had walked hand in hand with Louis all afternoon. The type is well
marked: forehead high and narrow, cheek-bones high and broad, nose
aquiline and depressed (the depression probably artificial), the mouth
large, with finely chiselled lips, the bow of the upper lip sharply
defined, the eyes, of course, admirable; and altogether there is a
strong appearance of good nature and good sense.
Part of the night Louis had a second satellite in the form of a
beautiful boy, so that he walked between him and Fani, hand in
hand with each; but Fani was his affinity. The whole island seemed
interested; the King, not too well pleased, suffered Fani to sit beside
Louis in the speak-house on the sofa of honour during the dance. Women
came up and commented on the resemblance between Fani and Fanny and
Etetera and Teritera (Louis's Tahitian name). On a table in front of
us were the lights--a half shell of cocoanut-oil with a twist of fibre
swimming on top and a glass bottle with the same oil and a wick. In the
side of the bottle a round hole had been ingeniously cut through the
glass for the convenience of cigarette smokers. While we were sitting
there, waiting for the dance, Tin Jack came in wearing the false nose
and wig. At first there was a general feeling of alarm, but most of
the people soon penetrated the disguise and were greatly amused. One
old dignitary, however, never discovered the jest, and was very much
frightened, asking me several times in a trembling voice if it was the
white man's devil. Louis's little girl did not even shrink, but looked
up into his face with smiling confidence.
[Illustration: _Natives dancing_]
The room was so dark that we could hardly see the dancers, so Louis
and I concluded to make a few calls and go back to the ship. We had
been asked to spend the night by some people as we passed their house
in the afternoon, so we thought to go there first. However, the man
who had been blown to Samoa caught us at the door and would have us go
to his house first. By this time all the people knew my name and were
calling me Fanny. When we thought we had done our duty by the mariner
we said we must now visit the people who had asked us to sleep in their
house; the man offered to guide us there, but instead took us to the
house where Fani belonged. It was a very large house and the people
seemed to be all asleep; but in a moment they were broad awake and in a
state of lively excitement, with the exception of one very old man who
remained lying in his bed and yawned drearily. Louis tried conversing
in a mélange of Samoan and Tahitian, with appreciable success. We
drank cocoanuts until we were "paea," and rose to go. A large fish was
laid at our feet in a plaited basket, then taken up and carried to our
boat. This was a handsome present, as fish is a great rarity. Fani's
father followed me with an immense number of large sponges tied on a
long pole. We were again haled away from our destination, this time by
the boatman, who took us back to his house, waking, I fear, his sick
wife, who, however, was all smiles. Pleaded "paea" and turned our faces
toward the boat, having given up our first intention in despair.
On the road we passed the schoolhouse compound where a double row
of people were singing and dancing. The men were squatted on their
haunches on one side of the path, the women on the other; down the
centre an oldish, very respectable-looking man, with the appearance of
a deacon, directed the dance, a staff in his hand. We were received
with shouts of welcome and a bench set out for us. I was envious of the
big town drum, made of hollowed cocoanut wood and covered with shark
skin, very like one I had already got from the Marquesas, and deputed
the trader to buy it for me. With the arrival of Mr. Henderson, who
came sauntering down the road, the deacon heartened up to a sort of
frenzy, suddenly bounding along the path and throwing his body and legs
about with the most grotesque and mirth-provoking contortions. We sat
here yet awhile, and at last tore ourselves away from the most charming
low island we have yet seen, Fani's father still following with the
sponges. I sent back, by the boatman, a piece of print for Fani,
sufficient to make a gown for her mother as well as herself. It was the
correct thing to do from the island point of etiquette, but all the
same a pity, for the less Fani covered her pretty brown body the better
she looked.
_7th._--Fani, her papa and her sister, first thing in the morning with
a basket of green cocoanuts and three packets of dyed pandanus leaves.
Fani at once possessed herself of one of Louis's hands, the sister the
other, while the lovely "Johnny Bull," who was on board almost as soon
as they were, hovered about smiling, and when he saw a chance slipped
an arm round Louis's neck. Johnny Bull was a tall lad of fifteen, and
I was told a half-caste, though he did not look it. Louis, having been
taken up by Fani, was considered quite one of the family. It is easy
to see how the copra eaters came by their "billets," and how decently
whites must have behaved here, that this little creature should have
come up to Louis in the dark as naturally as a child to its mother. The
sisters stayed by him until the whistle sounded. They were thoroughly
well-behaved, obedient children, neither shy nor forward. No doubt
Louis could have eaten copra from that day forth at the father's
expense.
One of the beach-combers was wrecked on Starbuck Island, his ship the
_Garston_; he lost all he possessed, and says he is passionately eager
to get away and very sick of living on cocoanuts; and yet, when offered
a chance to work his way home on the _Janet_, he asked anxiously if it
were a "soft job," refusing any other. Louis gave him the better part
of a tin of tobacco, but he got very little good from it. The hands of
the natives who had adopted him were stretched out on every side, and
one cigarette was his sole portion.