_Feasting and Fun on Steamer Day--The Brown People of Rara-tonga--Who
sent back the Teeth?--Divorce made easy--Climbing a Tropical Mountain--A
Hot-water Swim--Out on the Rainbow Coral Reef--Necklaces for No One._
STEAMER day in Raratonga, as in all the islands that rejoice in the
privilege of a regular steamer service, is beyond comparison the event
of the month. Almost before dawn on the day which is expected to see
the boat arrive, the traders are up and about, seeing to the carting of
their fruit and copra, and making ready the shelves of the stores for
the new goods coming in from Auckland. All the residents, men and women,
white and brown, are getting out the cleanest of muslins and drill
suits, and looking up the shoe-whitening box, which perhaps has not been
much in demand since the steamer called on her way back from Tahiti
last month. The daughters of the white community are making tinned-peach
pies, and dressing fowls, in case of callers--these are the inevitable
“company” dishes of the Pacific--and the native women are bringing out
their newly made straw hats, and, ironing their gayest of pink or yellow
or scarlet cotton, squatting cross-legged on the floor as they work.
Cocoanuts for drinking are being husked by the men of the village, and
laid in neat piles under the verandahs, out of the sun; and in most of
the little birdcage houses, the children are impounded to grate cocoanut
meat for cream; while the dying yells of pigs make day hideous from the
groves beyond the town.
When the tiny trail of smoke, for which every one is looking, first
rises out of the empty sea, it may be on the day expected, or it may be
later--there is little time in the Great South Seas--the whole island is
agape with excitement. The natives shriek with delight, and make haste
to gather flowers for wreaths and necklaces; the clean suits and frocks
are put on by brown and white alike, and the populace begins to
hover about the wharf like a swarm of excited butterflies. The great
whale-boats are ready to rush out at racing speed to the steamer, long
before she comes to a stop in the bay--she dares not come into the
harbour, which is only fit for small craft--passengers from Auckland
come ashore, anxious to see the island curiosities, and find to
their embarrassment that they are unmistakably regarded in that light
themselves; and, as soon as may be, the mail comes after them. Upon
which events, the whole population makes for the Government buildings,
and flings itself in one seething breaker against the door of the Post
Office, demanding its mails. While the letters are being sorted by a
handful of officials locked and barred out of reach within, it rattles
at the doors and windows, and as soon as the bolts are withdrawn, the
mighty host, breathless and ruthless, bursts in like a besieging army.
But when all are in, nobody has patience to wait and open papers, in
order to know what has been going on in the outer world all these weeks.
Purser, passengers, and even sailors are seized upon, and compelled to
stand and deliver news about “the war,” and other burning questions,
before any one thinks of opening the envelopes and wrappers in their
hands.
Minds being satisfied, bodies now assert their claim. Steamer day is
feast day--beef day, ice day, day for enjoying all the eatables that
cannot be had in the island itself. There is mutton in Raratonga, but
not much at the best of times, and of beef there is none at all. So all
the white folk order beef to come up monthly in the ship’s cold storage,
and for two happy days--the meat will keep no longer--they enjoy a feast
that might perhaps more fairly be called a “feed.” About noon on steamer
day, a savoury smell, to which the island has long been a stranger,
begins to diffuse itself throughout Avarua. Every one, with true island
hospitality, is asking every one else to lunch and dinner, to-day and
to-morrow, so that Mrs. A. and her family may have a taste of Mr. B.’s
sirloin, and Mr. B. get a bit of the C.’s consignment of steak, and the
A.’s and B.’s and E.’s enjoy a little bit of Colonel Z.’s roast ribs.
A sensuous, almost unctuous, happiness shines like a halo about every
face, and after dusk white dinner coats flit up and down the perfumed
avenues, thick as night-moths among the orange bloom overhead. Tomorrow
there will be great doings in the pretty bungalow on the top of the
hill, for the Resident Commissioner has got a big lump of ice as a
present from the captain of the steamer, and is hoarding it up in
blankets to give a dinner-party in its honour. The white man who could
consume a lump of ice all by himself, in the island world, would be
considered capable of any crime, and the hospitable Commissioner is the
last person to shirk his obligations in such a matter.
Once the steamer has come and gone, a dreamy peace settles down upon the
island. There is seldom much certainty as to clock time, since every one
goes by his own time-piece, and all vary largely, nor does any one heed
the day of the month overmuch. This pleasant disregard of time is the
true secret of the fascination of island life--or perhaps one of
the secrets, since no one has ever really succeeded in defining the
unspeakable charm of these lotus lands. Imagine a civilised community,
where people dine out in evening dress, leave cards and have “At Home”
days, yet where there is no post except the monthly ship mail, there are
no telegrams, trains, trams, times, appointments, or engagements of any
kind! Picture the peace that comes of knowing certainly that, for all
the time of the steamer’s absence there can be no disturbance of the
even current of life; no great events at home or abroad, no haste, or
worry, or responsibility! People keep young long in Raratonga; faces are
free from weariness and strain; the white man with the “burden” laughs
as merrily and as often as the brown man who carries nought but his
flowery necklace and his pareo. Nobody is rich--rich men do not come
down to the islands to run small plantations, or trading stores, or to
take up little appointments under a little Government--but every one has
enough, and extravagance is impossible, since luxuries are unpurchasable
on the island. There are so social distinctions, save that between white
and brown--all the seventy or eighty white residents knowing one
another on a footing of common equality, although in England or even New
Zealand, they would certainly be split up into half a score of mutually
contemptuous sets.
As for the natives--the jolly, laughing,-brown-skinned, handsome men and
women of the island--their life is one long day of peace and leisure and
plenty. The lands of the six thousand who once inhabited Raratonga are
now for the most part in the hands of the nineteen hundred survivors,
and every native has therefore a good deal more than he wants.
Breadfruit; bananas of many kinds, oranges, mammee-apples, and countless
other fruits, grow altogether, or almost, without cultivation; taro,
yam, and sweet potatoes need little, and cocoanuts are always to be had.
A native house can be put up in a day or two, furniture is superfluous,
and clothes consist of a few yards of cotton print. The Raratongan,
therefore, owes no tale of labour to Nature or Society for his existence
in quiet comfort, if he does not choose to work. But in many cases he
does choose, for he wants a buggy and a horse, and a bicycle or two, and
a sewing machine for his wife; shoes with squeaking soles for
festive wear--deliberately made up with “squeakers” for island trade,
these--bottles of coarse strong scent, tins of meat and salmon as
an occasional treat, and, if he is ambitious, one of those concrete,
iron-roofed houses of which I have already spoken, to enhance his social
position, and make the neighbours envious, what time he continues to
live peaceably and comfortably in his palm hut outside--not being quite
such a fool in this matter as he looks.
Sometimes the Raratongan will go so far as to get his front teeth
stopped with gold by a travelling dentist, purely for style, since he
is gifted by nature with grinders that will smash any fruit stone,
and incisors that will actually tear the close tough husk off a
huge cocoanut without trouble. It is related of one of the wealthier
Raratongans that, being stricken in years and short of teeth, he
purchased a set of false ones from a visiting dentist, and that the
latter, when he next returned to the island, was astonished to find the
set thrown on his hands as no good, on the grounds that they would not
husk cocoanuts!
In order to secure all these more or less desirable luxuries, the
Raratongan trades in fruit and copra. That is to say, he cuts up
and dries (strictly at his leisure, and when he feels like it) a few
thousand cocoanuts, or nails up some hundreds of oranges, and scores of
banana bunches, from his overflowing acres, in wooden crates, to send
down to Auckland. This labour, repeated a few times, brings him in good
British gold by the handful. Copra, sold to the traders in the town,
fetches about seven pounds a ton, and a family working for a few days
can prepare as much as that. Other produce is hardly less profitable, to
a cultivator who has more land than he wants, provides his own labour,
and need spend nothing on seeds or plants. There is, at most, only light
work, and that seldom, so that the Raratongan can, and often does, spend
the greater part of his time singing in choruses on the verandahs of
the houses, dancing to the thrilling beat of a native drum under the
cocoanut trees, or fishing lazily off the reef.
The Raratongans are all, to a man, good Christians--good Protestants
of the Dissenting variety, good Catholics, and, in a few cases,
enthusiastic Seventh Day Adventists--being readily enough inclined to
adhere to a cult that makes it sinful to work on the seventh day of
the week, and impossible to work on the first. It is said that Mormon
missionaries have visited the group, but failed to make converts.
Without going into details that might disturb the sensitive mind,
one feels obliged to remark, in this connection, that the failure was
probably on all fours, as to cause, with the ill-success of the merchant
who attempted to sell coals to Newcastle.
And--still concerning this matter--“one word more, and I have done.”
Some weeks after my arrival, I was going round the group in company with
the Resident Commissioner and a few more officials, who were
holding courts and administering justice in the various islands. The
Commissioner was late getting back to the ship one afternoon, and the
captain asked him if he had been detained.
“Only a little while,” replied the guardian angel of the group,
cheerfully rattling his pockets, which gave forth a pleasant chinking
sound. “Another dozen of divorces. We’ll have a new road round the
island next year.” And he went to dinner.
Divorce in the Cook Islands is not an expensive luxury. If memory serves
me right, it costs under thirty shillings, and there is a sixpence
somewhere in the price--I am unable to say why. But I remember very well
indeed, after the officials had gone home, when I was travelling round
about other islands with a captain, who had just taken over the ship and
did not know the Cook group, that dignitary came to me one day and said:
“I can’t make out these hands of mine. They’re a very decent lot for
niggers, and don’t give no trouble, but one and another, now that we’re
going round the islands, keeps coming to me and asking me for an advance
on their wages, because, says they, they’ve been a long time from home,
and they wants it--and every blessed one of them he wants the same
advance!”
“Was it so-and-so?” I asked, mentioning a certain small sum with a
sixpence in it.
“How on earth did you know?” was the reply.
“Price of a divorce from the Commissioner,” I explained.
“Well!” said the captain, who was a hard-shelled old whaler, with a
strong religious cast. And again--“Well!”
“That’s what I think myself,” I explained. “But it certainly fills
the exchequer. I hear the score runs up to ten or twelve apiece, often
enough.”
“Disgustin’,” said the captain, spitting over the rail.
“Certainly,” I agreed.
But the incident has its own significance, so I have recorded it.
I linger long over the life and ways of Raratonga, for I spent many
very happy weeks there--studying native customs, and taking notes? Well,
perhaps--a little, at all events. Raratonga is not quite so lazy a place
as Tahiti, and the climate is less trying. Still--still------
How impossible it is to explain to the reader who has never spent a
hot season in the tropics! I think I shall not try. There were missed
opportunities--there were things I ought to have studied, and did not,
and things I should have seen, and didn’t see. It is of no use to
say why. Those who have passed between the magic line of Cancer
and Capricorn will not need to ‘be told, and the others could not
understand.
I did something to satisfy my conscience, however, when I climbed the
highest mountain in Raratonga--a peak something over three thousand feet
high, so the residents said. It was reported that the Admiralty survey
did not agree by a hundred feet or so, with the local estimate. I know
myself that both were wrong; that peak is ten thousand, or perhaps a
little more. Did it not take myself and two or three others from seven
a.m. until nine p.m to get up and down, working as hard as white ants
(there is nothing in the islands really busy except the ants) all the
time?
We went the wrong way--several wrong ways--we lost our food and our
water, and got so thirsty that we licked the leaves of the trees, and so
hungry that it was agony to know ourselves above the zone of the orange
and banana all day, and see the food we could not reach till night
hanging in clusters far below. We did most of our climbing by the heroic
method of swarming up perpendicular rock faces on the ladders of the
creepers, and a good deal of it by scrambling along in the tops of small
trees, like monkeys. When we got to the top there was just room for the
whole party to stand and cheer, and we cheered ourselves vigorously.
People do not climb mountains--much--in the islands of the Pacific, and
the peak we were on had been trodden by only one or two white men, and
no white women.
“There used to be natives up here often enough, some years ago, shooting
wild fowl,” said one of our guides, letting the smoke of his pipe curl
out over “half a duchy,” lying blue and green, and far, far down, under
his elbow. “But they stopped coming. Several of ’em got killed, and
the others didn’t think it good enough.”
“How did they get killed?” I ask, listening to the wild cocks crowing in
the sea of green down below, like a farm-yard gone astray.
“Oh, climbing!”
When we had finished admiring the view of the island, we started down
again. And now, what with our hunger, and our fatigue, and the wild
adventures in impossible places we had had coming up, we all became
rather tired, and more than rather reckless. Over and over again,
slithering down steep descents, we let ourselves go, and tobogganed,
sitting, we did not care where. The lianas crashed, the red-flowered
rata snapped and fell on us, the lace-like tree ferns got in our way
with their damp black trunks, and banged us as we tumbled past. Every
one knew that if we did not get off the precipice slopes before dark, we
should have to halt wherever we might be, and wait till morning, holding
tight to the trunk of a tree to keep from falling down into depths
unknown. But no one said anything about it.
And in the end, we got back safe--sore and tired and hungry; not
thirsty, however, for we had found a stream in the interminable dark of
the valley, and had all put our heads into it like brutes, the moment
our feet felt the welcome hollow and splashed into the water. The ladies
of the party had not a whole gown among them, and not very much else,
so shrewdly had the thorns and creepers of the close-knitted forest
squeezed and torn us. Still, we had got up where no white women had been
before, and we were all very proud, though we had to slink homeward in
the dark, avoiding the lights of the houses, and each slip in unobserved
at the back doors of our respective homes. But we had done the climb,
and------ “That was something,” as Hans Andersen would have said.
Picnics we had in plenty, while I stayed. Sometimes they were bathing
picnics, when the ladies of half a dozen houses went off to spend the
day down on the shore, and swim in the lagoon. The water, not more than
five feet deep in any place, was the colour of green grass when the sun
shines through, and it was as warm as an ordinary hot bath. One could
spend hour after hour amusing Oneself with swimming tricks, coming out
now and then to roast for a little on the hot, snow-white coral
sand, where bits and branches of coral pretty enough for a museum lay
scattered everywhere, and exquisite flowering creepers spread their long
green tails of leafage--often thirty or forty, feet in length, and all
starred with pink or yellow blossoms--right across the broad expanse of
the beach. Coming out finally, it was customary to find a big rock, and
stand-with one’s back against it till the wet bathing dress was half
dried with the blistering heat of the stone. This was supposed to
prevent chills. I think myself that one would have to hunt a chill very
hard indeed in the hot season in Raratonga, before catching it. It is
not a place where one hears of “chill” troubles, and there is no fever
of any kind. When you find a draught there, you tell every one else in
the house about it, and they come and sit in it with you. When you give
tea, to callers, it is correct to serve cold water on the tray to temper
the beverage, and put a spoon instead of a butter knife, in the butter
dish.
Nor does it cool down overmuch at night, in the hot months, though in
the “cold” ones, you may want a blanket now and then. The temperature
being so equable all round, chills are, naturally, not to be looked for
and feared at every turn, as in the great tropic continents, where there
is no surrounding sea to prevent rapid radiation of heat, and sudden
changes of temperature are frequent and deadly. On the whole, there is
much to be said in favour of the climate of the Southern Pacific, and
little against it. It enjoys a long cool season of at least six months,
when the heat is not at all oppressive. Three months of the year
are very hot and damp, and three neither hot nor cool. At worst, the
thermometer seldom goes above ninety in the shade. White children can
be brought up in the islands without injury to health, and many of the
older residents have spent the best part of a long life in the South
Seas, and attained to a venerable age, without ever suffering from
illness. The Government doctor in Raratonga leads an easy life on the
whole, and in the other islands of the Cook Group the entire absence of
medical advice seems to trouble no one.
A reefing picnic was among the many pleasant entertainments to which I
was invited during my stay. “Reefing” is such a favourite entertainment
in the islands that nearly every white woman has a reefing skirt and
shoes in her wardrobe--the former short, like a hockey skirt, the
latter stout and old. Buggies are gathered together in the town, and the
picnickers drive to a suitable spot some distance away, where the horses
are taken out and tethered, and the “reefers” secure a canoe to bring
them to their destination--the coral barrier reef, lying between the
lagoon and the sea.
Paddled by some of the native guests (for there are generally a few
Raratongans included in the party) the canoes glide easily over
the shallow water towards the reef, flights of the exquisite little
sapphire-coloured fish that haunt the coral rocks, scattering beneath
the keel like startled butterflies. Now the water is of the most vivid
and burning emerald, shooting green lightnings to the sun, now, as we
near the reef, it begins to change in colour, and-----
Oh!
Why, the canoe is floating on a liquid rainbow--on a casket of jewels
melted down and poured into the burning sea--on glancing shades of
rose, and quivering gleams of violet, and gold and blue and amethyst and
chrysophrase, all trembling and melting one into another in marvels
of colouring that leave all language far behind. Under the keel, as we
shoot forward, rise and sink wonderful water-bouquets of purple, pink,
and pearl; great lacy fans of ivory; frilled and fluted fairy shells,
streamers of brilliant weed, and under and through all these wonders
glint, from far below, the dark blue depths of unplumbed caverns
beneath. It is the coral reef, and we are going to land upon a
spot exposed by the tide, and see what we can see of these wonders,
by-and-by. If we were bent on fishing, we might spend a pleasant hour or
two catching some of these peacock and parrot-coloured fish that flutter
through these wonderful water-gardens. But reefing proper is more
amusing, after all.
At a point where the coral juts out above the sea, we leave the canoe,
and start to walk about. It is very like trying to walk on a gigantic
petrified hair-brush. The coral is peaked and pointed, and wrought into
honeycombed sponges of stone, and there is nowhere for the foot to rest
in security. Besides, the reef is covered with sea urchins possessing
spines as long and sharp as a big slate-pencil, and these things pierce
through any but the stoutest shoes. The colours of the sea-urchins are
fascinating, and we pick up a good many, in spite of difficulties. Then
there are tiger shells, shiny and spotted, in hues of orange and brown,
and beautiful scarlet and pinky and lilac and chequered shells, and
the daintiest of goffered clam shells, pearl white within, ivory white
without, as large as a pea-pod, or as large as a vegetable dish--you
may take your choice. And, if you are lucky, there is a varnished brown
snail shell that you would not think worth picking up, if you did not
happen to know that it has a “peacock-eye” gem, good to set in brooches,
inside its plain little front door--like the homely brown toad of fable,
that carried a jewel in its head. Much other spoil there is to put
in your basket, and many things that you have no desire to possess at
all--among them the huge hanks of slimy black string, which are alive,
and wrigglesome, and not at all pleasant to put your hand on--and the
wicked-faced great eels that look suddenly out of holes, and vanish,
bubbling; and the revolting, leprous-spotted fish with the spiny back,
that one may chance to see lurking at the bottom of a pool, every spine
charged full of deadly poison for whoever touches it with unwary foot
or hand. Indeed, the friends who are with you will warn you not to put
your fingers into any pool, but to hook out shells and other spoil
with a stick, if you want to be really careful, for there, are as many
stinging and biting things among the beauties of the coral reef, as
there thorns in a bed of roses.
I have secured a good many shells, and a Reckitt’s blue star-fish as
big as a dinner-plate, and one or two other curiosities, and now I want,
above everything else, one of those miraculous coral bouquets that bloom
so temptingly just beneath the surface at this point. One of my friends
asks me which I will have--with a smile, that, somehow or other, seems
to amuse the rest. I select a pinky-violet one, and with some dragging
and pounding, it is detached, and held up in the sun.
“Oh!” I exclaim disappointedly, and every one laughs. The beautiful
bunch of coral flowers is a dirty liver-colour, and the magical hues are
gone.
“It’s the water that gives the colours,” explains the coral-gatherer.
“Every one is awfully disappointed about it.”
“Are there no colours at all, then?”
“Oh yes, a little shade of pinkiness, and a touch of green, and that
purply-brown. But you should see the corals when they are cleaned
and dried. You’d better have these, you won’t know them when they are
bleached; they’re like spider’s webs and lace furbelow things, all in
white.”
“Is there none of the real red stuff?” I ask somewhat ruefully,
balancing myself with difficulty upon a sort of ornamental sponge-basket
of spiky coral.
“Not here. All these volcanic islands have a ring of coral reef right
round, but the coral is always the white kind. There’s a very little red
coral in Samoa, and about Penrhyn, I believe. But, speaking generally,
it’s all white in the Pacific.”
I think of the dreams of my childhood, and the delightful pictures of
palmy islands circled round with a chevaux-de-frise of high spiky red
coral, which used to flit before my fancy on holiday afternoons. It is
true that the cold practicalities of the _Voyage of the Challenger_,
which somebody gave me in my “flapper” days, once and for all, to my
bitter disappointment, knocked the bottom out of those cherished schemes
of going away to live on something like a glorified coral necklace, some
day. But I wonder, as I get into the canoe again, and glide shorewards
and teawards, paddled by the swift brown arms of native girls, how many
grown-up people still hold to that delightful fancy, not knowing that it
is as impossible to realise as a dream of rambling in the moon?
Tea is preparing on the shore when we get back, very wet and dirty, but
very well pleased. The native girls among the guests immediately offer
us spare dresses. It is the mode among Raratongans to take two or three
dresses to a picnic, and retire every now and then into the bush to
change one smart muslin or cotton “Mother Hubbard” for another--just for
pure style. So there are plenty of clothes to spare, and in a minute or
two the damp, sea-weedy “reefers” are fitted out with flowing garments
of clean cambric and silk, of a mode certainly better adapted to the
climate than the fitted garments of the “papalangi.”
This question of dress is a burning one among island ladies. The native
loose robe, hung straight down from a yoke, is very much cooler, and
the doctors say, healthier, than belted and corseted dresses such as
European women wear. But there is nevertheless a strong feeling against
it, because it is supposed to mean a tendency to “go native,” and the
distinguishing customs of the race acquire, in the island world, a
significance quite out of proportion to their surface importance,
because of the greatness of the thing they represent. Therefore, the
white woman, unless she is suffering from bad health, and needs every
possible help to withstand the heat of the climate, sticks to her
blouses and corsets, as a rule, and sometimes “says things” about people
who do not. For all that, and all that, the native woman is in the
right, and if the other would agree to adopt the pretty, womanly, and
essentially graceful robe of the native, no one would be the loser, and
half of island humanity would be greatly the gainer.
Later, when the dusk is coming down, and the magic moon of the islands
is creeping, big and round and yellow-gold, out of a purple sea, we
drive home again through the scented gloom of the forest, the endless
song of the reef accompanying the voices of the native women, as they
chant strange island melodies of long ago, that no one in these days,
not even the singers themselves, can fully translate or understand. The
moon climbs quickly up as we drive, and the road is as light as day,
when our wheels roll into the sleeping town.