_How not to see the Islands--Lonely Niué--A Heathen Quarantine
Board--The King and the Parliament--The Great Question of Gifts--Is
it Chief-like?--The New Woman in Niué--Devil-fish and Water-Snakes--An
Island of Ghosts--How the Witch-Doctor died--The Life of a Trader._
LANDINGS on Pacific islands are not usually easy, but there are few
approaches as bad as that of Niué, the solitary outlier of Polynesia. It
is a difficult task to get within reasonable distance of the land in the
first place, and when the ship has succeeded in manoeuvring safely up
to the neighbourhood of the cruel cliffs, the trouble is only beginning.
There are no harbours worth the name on the island, although the cliffs
show an occasional crack through which a boat may be brought down to
the sea, and the circling reef is broken here and there. The best that a
ship can do is to lie off at a safe distance, put out a boat, and trust
to the skill of the crew to effect a landing on the wharf. In anything
but really calm weather, communication is impossible. However, there are
very many calm days in this part of the Pacific, so chances are fairly
frequent.
It was not at all as calm as one could have wished when the _Duchess_
put out her whaleboat to bring me ashore. But the pirate trusted to his
luck, and was, as usual, justified. The boat passage proved to be a mere
crack in the reef, through which the sea rushed with extreme violence,
dancing us up and down like a cork. It was not difficult for our smart
Maori crew to fend us off the knife-edged coral walls with their oars,
as we manoeuvred down towards the spider-legged little iron ladder
standing up in the surf, and pretending to be a wharf. But when we got
within an oar’s length of the ladder, and the boat was leaping wildly on
every swell, things got more exciting. The only way of landing on Niué
is to watch your time at the foot of the ladder, while the men fend
the boat off the coral, and jump on to the rungs at the right moment. A
native standing on the platform at the top takes you by the arms as
you rise, and snatches you into the air as the eagle snatched Endymion.
Only, instead of going all the way to heaven, you land on the pier--or
what passes for it--and find yourselves upon the soil of Niué.
Behind the pier rises a little pathway cut in the face of the rock, and
leading up to the main street of the capital. Once up the path, we are
fairly arrived in Savage Island.
It is not a place known to the globe-trotting tourist, as yet. Much
of the Pacific has been “discovered” by the tripper element of recent
years, but Niué is still almost inviolate. Once here, if one seeks the
true spirit of the South Seas, one still may find it.
Travellers go in scores by every steamer to Samoa, to Fiji, to Honolulu,
which are on the beaten track of “round-the-world.” They drive up to
Stevenson’s villa, they make excursions to Nuuanu Pali, they see a
sugar plantation here, and a kava drinking there, and a native dance,
specially composed to suit tourists’ tastes, somewhere else. They stay
a week in a fine modern hotel, drink green cocoanuts (and other things
that are stronger), take photographs of island girls wearing imported
Parisian or Sydney costumes, and think they have seen the life of the
islands. Never was there a greater mistake. The sweet South Seas do
not so easily yield up their secret and their charm. The spell that for
three hundred years has drawn the wandering hearts of the world across
the ocean ploughed by the keels of Drake and Hawkins and Cook, of
Dampier, Bougainville, and Bligh, will not unfold itself save to him who
will pay the price. And the price to-day is the same in kind, though
not in degree, as that paid by those old explorers and adventurers--hard
travel, scanty food, loneliness, loss of money and time, forgetting the
cities and civilisation. To know the heart of the South Seas, all these
things must be encountered willingly, with a love of the very hardship
they may bring, strong as the seabird’s love of the tossing waters and
thunderwaking storm.
The typical British tourist--yes, even he--hears from far off, at times,
the mysterious call of the island world, and tells himself that he will
listen to it a little nearer, and enjoy the siren song sung to so many
long before him. Hence his visits to the great Pacific ports that can
be reached by liner; hence, in most cases, his gradually acquired
conviction that the islands are, after all, very much like any other
place in the tropics--beautiful, interesting, but---- Well, writer
fellows always exaggerate: every one knows that.
Hotel dinners, big liners, shops, hired carriages, guides, and picture
postcards--these things are death to the spirit of the South Seas. This
is the first lesson that the island wanderer must learn. Where every one
goes the bloom is off the peach. Leave the great ports and the steamers;
disregard the advice of every one who knows anything (most people in the
island towns know everything, but you must not listen to them, for the
jingling of the trade dollar has long since deafened their ears to the
song of the mermaids on the coral beaches); take ship on a schooner, it
does not much matter where; live in a little bungalow under the palms
for weeks or months; ride and swim and feast with the brown people of
the coral countries, as one of themselves; learn, if you do not already
know, how to live on what you can get, and cook what you catch or pick
or shoot, to sleep on a mat and wash in a stream, do without newspapers
and posts, forget that there ever was a war anywhere, or an election, or
that there will ever be a “season” anywhere again; and so perhaps, the
charm of the island world will whisper itself in your waiting ear. What
then? What happened to the men who ate the enchanted fruit of the lotus
long ago? Well, no one ever said that the sweetness of the fruit was not
worth all that it cost.
There are about five thousand native inhabitants on Niué, and generally
a score or so of whites--almost all traders. Alofi, the capital,
possesses a few hundred of the former, and nearly all the latter. It is
a winsome little spot, and I loved it the moment the wide grassy street
first broke upon my view, as I climbed the narrow pathway from the
shore.
The houses stand down one side, as is the invariable custom of South
Sea towns. They are whitewashed concrete for the most part, built by
the natives out of materials furnished by the coral reef. The roofs are
plaited pandanus thatch, high and steep. The doors are mostly windows,
or the windows doors--it would be hard to say which. They are simply
long openings filled in with wooden slats, which can be sloped to suit
the wind and weather. Mats and cooking pots and the inevitable Chinese
camphor-wood box, for keeping clothes in, are all the furniture.
Round the doorways grow palms and gay hibiscus, and cerise-flowered
poinsettia, and here and there a native will have set up an odd
decoration of glittering stalactites from the caves on the shore, to
sparkle in the sun by his doorstep. The white men’s houses have grass
compounds in front for the most part, and many have iron roofs, glass
windows, and other luxuries.
All these houses look the one way--across the wide, empty grassy street,
between the stems of the leaning palms, to the sunset and the still blue
sea. It is a lonely sea, this great empty plain lying below the little
town. The _Duchess_ calls twice a year, the mission steamer once, a
trade steamer, ancient and worn out, limps across from Tonga, about
three hundred miles away, every ten or twelve months. That is all. The
island itself owns nothing bigger than a whaleboat, and cannot as a rule
communicate with any other place in case of emergency. Some few months
before my visit, a trader had very urgent need to send a letter to
Australia. After waiting in vain for something to call, he sighted
an American timber brig on her way to Sydney, far out on the horizon.
Hastily launching a native canoe, and filling it with fruit, he paddled
three or four miles out to sea, in the hope of being seen by the ship.
His signals were perceived, and the brig hove to, when the trader
paddled up to her, offered his fruit as a gift, and begged the captain
to take his letter. This the sailor willingly did, and still more
willingly accepted the excellent Niué bananas and oranges that went with
the missive. And so the post was caught--Niué fashion.
There is no doctor on the island as a rule, and if you want to die
during the intervals between ships, you may do so unopposed. I am almost
afraid to state how healthy the people of Niué are as a rule, in spite
of--or can it be in consequence of?--this deprivation.
The “bush” overflows the town, after the charming way of bush, in this
island world. Big lilies, bell-shaped, snowy petalled, and as long as
your hand, spill over into the main street from the bordering scrub. The
grass on the top of the cliff, the day I landed, was blazing with great
drifts of fiery salvia, and starred with pink and yellow marigolds.
About the houses were clumps of wild “foliage plants,” claret and
crimson leaved, looking like a nurseryman’s bedding-out corner. The coco
palm that I knew so well had a sister palm here, of a kind new to me--an
exceedingly graceful tree twenty to thirty feet high, bearing small
inedible berry-like fruits, and splendid fan-shaped leaves, of the shape
and size once so familiar in the “artistic type of drawing-room” at
home. Pinnacles of fantastic grey rock, all spiked and spired, started
up unexpectedly in the midst of the riotous green, and every pinnacle
was garlanded cunningly with wreaths and fronds of flowering vines.
There were mammee-apples and bananas beside most of the houses: yellow
oranges hung as thickly in the scrub as ornaments on a Christmas tree,
and one or two verandahs were decorated with the creeping trailers of
the delicious granadilla. A land of peace and plenty, it looked in the
golden rays of the declining sun, that windy blue afternoon. It proved
alas, to be nothing of the kind: its soil is fertile, but so thinly
scraped over the coral rock for foundation, that very little in the way
of nutritious food will grow--it has no water save what can be gathered
from deep clefts in the rocks, the bananas are scanty, the mammee-apples
unsatisfying, and the “oranges” are for the most part citrons,
drinkable, as lemons are, but little use for anything else. Indeed,
Niué is a useless place altogether, and nobody makes fortunes there
now-a-days, though one or two did well out of the “first skim” of its
trading, a generation ago. Nor does any one grow fat there, upon a
diet of tinned meats, biscuit, and fruit. Nor are there any marvellous
“sights,” like the volcanoes of Hawaii, or the tribe dancing and
firewalking of Fiji. Still I loved Niué, and love it yet.
It was so very far away, to begin with. In other islands, with regular
steamers, people concerned themselves to some degree about the doings of
the outer world, and used to wonder how things were getting on, beyond
the still blue bar of sea. Newspapers arrived, people came and went,
things were done at set times, more or less. One was still in touch with
the world, though out of sight.
But in Niué, the isolation was complete. There was no come and go. We
were on the road to nowhere. Nobody knew when any communication
with anywhere would be possible, so nobody troubled, and save for an
occasional delirious day when a ship really did come in, and waked us
all from our enchanted slumber for just So long as you might turn round
and look about you before dropping off into dreams again, we were asleep
to all that lay beyond the long horizon line below the seaward-leaning
palms. Niué was the world. The rest was a cloudy dream.
I rented a little cottage in the heart of a palm-grove, when I settled
down to wait for the problematic return of the _Duchess_, and see the
life of Niué. It belonged to a native couple, Kuru and Vekia, who were
well-to-do, and had saved money selling copra. The Niuéan, unlike every
other Polynesian, is always willing and anxious to make a bargain or do
a deal of any kind, and Kuru and his wife were as delighted to get the
chance of a “let” as any seaside landlady. They moved their small goods
out of the house most readily, and left me in full possession of the
two rooms and the verandah and the innumerable doors and windows, with
everything else to find for myself.
A general collection of furniture, taken up by a friendly white
resident, resulted in the loan of a bed and a box and a table, three
chairs, some cups and cutlery, and a jug and basin. These, with a
saucepan lent by my landlady (who, as I have said, was rich, and
possessed many superfluities of civilisation), made up the whole of my
household goods. For two months I occupied the little house among the
palms, and was happy. “Can a man be more than happy?” runs the Irish
proverb, and answer there is none.
There were never, in all my island wanderings, such shadows or such
sunsets, as I saw in lonely Niué. The little house was far away from
others, and the palms stood up round it close to the very door. In the
white, white moonlight, silver-clear and still as snow, I used to stay
for half a night on my verandah, sitting crosslegged in the darkness of
the eaves, and watching the wonderful great stars of shadow drawn out,
as if in ink, round the foot of every palm-tree. The perfect circle
of tenderly curving rays lay for the most part still as some wonderful
drawing about the foot of the tree; but at rare intervals, when the hour
was very late, and even the whisper of the surf upon the reef seemed to
have grown tired and dim and far away, the night would turn and sigh in
its sleep for just a moment, and all the palm-tree fronds would begin to
sway and shiver up in the sparkling moon-rays, glancing like burnished
silver in the light. Then the star at the foot would dance and sway as
well, and weave itself into forms of indescribable beauty, as if the
spirit of Giotto of the marvellous circles were hovering unseen in the
warm air of this alien country that he never knew, and pencilling forms
more lovely than his mortal fingers ever drew on earth.... Yes, it was
worth losing one’s sleep for, in those magic island nights.
In the daytime, I rode and walked a good deal about the island, which
is very fairly provided with roads, and tried to find out what I could
about the people and their ways. There is not a more interesting island
in the Pacific than Niué, from an ethnological point of view; but my
scientific knowledge was too contemptibly small to enable me to make use
of my opportunities. This I regretted, for the place is full of strange
survivals of ancient customs and characteristics, such as are seldom to
be found among Christianised natives. The people are somewhat rude
and rough in character; indeed until about forty years ago, they
were actually dangerous. Their island is one of the finest of natural
fortresses, and they used it as such, declining to admit strangers on
any pretext. Captain Cook attempted to land in 1777, but was beaten
off before he had succeeded in putting his boat’s crew ashore. Other
travellers for the most part gave the place a wide berth.
When men of the island wandered away to other places (the Niuéan is a
gipsy by nature) they received no kindly welcome on attempting to come
home. The Niuéan had an exceeding fear of imported diseases, and to
protect himself against them, he thought out a system of sanitary
precaution, all on his own account, which was surely the completest
the world has ever seen. There was no weak link in the chain: no break
through which measles, or cholera, or worse could creep, during the
absence of an official, or owing to the carelessness of an inspector.
Every person attempting to land on Niué, be he sick or well, stranger,
or native, was promptly killed! That was Niué’s rule. You might go away
from the island freely, but if you did, you had better not attempt to
come back again, for the “sanitary officers” would knock your brains
out on the shore. It was without doubt the simplest and best system of
quarantine conceivable. Possibly as a result of this Draconian law, the
people of Niué are remarkably strong and hardy to-day, though since the
relaxation of the ancient rule, a certain amount of disease has crept
in.
The people, though warlike and fierce, were never cannibals here at the
worst. They did not even eat their enemies when slain in battle. They
enjoyed a fight very much, however, when they got the chance of one,
and still remembered the Waterloo victory of their history, against the
fierce Tongans, about two hundred years ago. The Tongans, until within
the last half-century, seem to have been the Danes of the Pacific,
always hunting and harrying some other maritime people, and always a
name of terror to weak races. Tonga is the nearest land to Niué, being
about three hundred miles away, so it was not to be expected that the
Niuéans would escape invasion, and they were fully prepared for the
Tongan attack when it did come. They did not attempt to meet force by
force. There was one place they knew where the Tongans might succeed in
landing, and near to this they laid a cunning plan for defence.
A trader took me down to see the spot one Sunday afternoon. It is one
of the numerous caves of Niué, with a top open for the most part to the
sky. The cave runs underneath the greenery and the creeping flowers
of the bush--a long black gash just showing here and there among the
leaves. The drop is forty or fifty feet, and an unwary foot might very
easily stumble over its edge, even now.
On the day when the Tongan war canoes broke the level line of the sea
horizon, the Niué men hastened to the shore, and prepared the cave in
such a way as to set a fatal and most effective trap for their enemies.
They cut down a mass of slight branches and leafy twigs, and covered
the gulf completely, so that nothing was to be seen except the ordinary
surface of the low-growing bush. When the enemies landed, the Niué men
showed themselves on the farther side of the cave, as if fleeing into
the woods. The Tongans, with yells of joy, rushed in pursuit, straight
over the gulf--and in another moment were lying in crushed and dying
heaps at the foot of the pit, while the men of Niué, dashing out of
ambush on every side, ran down into the cave from its shallow end and
butchered their enemies as they lay.
After this, it is said that the Tongans left Niué alone.
Because of the loneliness and inaccessibility of the place, the Savage
Islanders have always been different from the rest of the Pacific. The
typical “Kanaka” is straight-haired, light brown in colour, mild and
gentle and generous in disposition, ready to welcome strangers and feast
them hospitably. He is aristocratic to the backbone in his ideas, and
almost always has a native class of nobles and princes, culminating in a
hereditary king.
The Savage Islander is often frizzy-haired, and generally a darkish
brown in colour. His manners are rather brusque, and he gives nothing
without obtaining a heavy price for it. He has no chiefs, nobles, or
princes, and does not want any. There is always a head of the State, who
enjoys a certain amount of mild dignity, and may be called the King
for want of a better name. The office is not hereditary, however, the
monarch being elected by the natives who form the island Parliament.
Meetings of this Parliament are held at irregular intervals; and
the King, together with the British Resident Commissioner, takes an
important part in the debates.
These are very formal affairs. The brown M.P.s who live, each in his
own village, in the utmost simplicity of manners and attire, dress
themselves up for the day in full suits of European clothing, very heavy
and hot, instead of the light and comfortable cotton kilt they generally
wear. They travel into Alofi and join the local members on the green
before the public hall--generally used as a school-house. King Tongia
joins them, the British Resident comes also, and for hour after hour,
inside the great, cool hall, with its matted floor and many open
window-embrasures, the talk goes on. This road is to be made, that
banyan tree is to be removed, regulation pigsties are to be built in
such a village, petitions are to be sent up to New Zealand about the tax
on tobacco--and so on, and so on. The king is a tough old man; he has
his say on most questions, and it is not considered generally good for
health or business to oppose him too much; but of royal dignity he has,
and asks for, none.
There is something quite American in the history of Tongia’s elevation,
some seven years ago. He had acted as Prime Minister to the late head of
the State; and when the latter died he calmly assumed the reins without
going through the formality of an election. This was not the usual
custom, and some of the members remonstrated. Tongia told them, however,
that he was in the right, and meant to stay on. When the captain of a
ship died on a voyage, did not his chief mate take over command? The
cases were exactly parallel, to his mind. This argument pleased the
members, who had most of them been to sea, and Tongia was allowed to
retain his seat, the objectors calming themselves with the thought of
the sovereign’s age--he was well over eighty at that time. “He is only
the stump of a torch,” they said; “he will soon burn out.” But the stump
is burning yet, and shows no symptoms of extinction. Tongia married a
pretty young girl soon after his “election,” settled down in the royal
palace--a whitewashed cottage with a palm-thatch roof--and seems likely
to outlast many of his former opponents.
The powers of the king, limited as they are, have lessened since 1902,
when New Zealand annexed Niué--a proceeding that had its humorous side,
if one examines the map, for Niué is something like a thousand miles
from Auckland. The Resident Commissioner who is responsible for the
well-being of the island lives in a house much more like a palace than
Tongia’s modest hut, and is in truth the real ruler of the place. His
work, however, is not overpowering. He is supposed to be judge and
lawgiver, among many other duties, but in Niué no one ever seems to do
anything that requires punishment. There is nothing in the shape of a
prison, if any one did. Innocent little crimes, such as chicken stealing
with extenuating circumstances, or allowing pigs to trespass into
somebody’s garden, occasionally blot the fair pages of the island
records, but a little weeding, or a day’s work on the road is considered
sufficient punishment for these. At the time of my stay, which lasted
nearly two months, such a wave of goodness seemed to be passing over the
island that the Resident complained he could not find enough crime in
the place to keep his garden weeded, and declared that he really wished
somebody would do something, and do it quick, or all his imported
flowers would be spoiled! Since the forties, missionaries have been busy
in Savage Island, and there is no doubt that they have done their work
effectively. The early traders, who arrived near the same time, also
helped considerably in the civilisation of the natives. Drink has never
been a trouble on Niué, and at the present date, no native ever tastes
it, and strict regulations govern importation by the whites, for their
own use. The natives are healthy, although European diseases are by no
means unknown. Skin diseases are so troublesome that many of the traders
wash the money they get from the bush towns, before handling, and the
new-comer’s first days in the island are sure to be harassed by the
difficulties of avoiding miscellaneous hand-shaking. Knowing what one
knows about the prevalence of skin-troubles, one does not care to run
risks; but the Niuéan, like all islanders, has unfortunately learned the
habit of continual hand-shaking from his earliest teachers, and is never
likely to unlearn it. So the visitor who does not want to encounter
disappointed faces and puzzled inquiries, looks out old gloves to go
a-walking with, and burns them, once he or she is settled in the place,
and no longer a novelty.
There are manners in Niué--of a sort. “Fanagé fei!” is the greeting
to any one met on the road, and it must not be left out, or the Savage
Islanders will say you have no manners. It means, “Where are you going?”
and it is not at all an empty inquiry, for you must mention the name
of your destination in reply, and then repeat the inquiry on your own
account, and listen for the answer. Riding across the island day by day,
I used to pass in a perfect whirlwind of “Where-are-you-goings?”
callings out hastily, as the horse cantered over the grassy road,
“Avatele,” or “Mutelau,” (names of villages) or “Misi Nicolasi” (Mrs.
Nicholas, a trader’s wife), and adding as I passed on: “Fanagé fei?” to
the man or woman who had greeted me. There was generally a long story in
reply, but I fear I was usually out of hearing before it was ended. My
manners, out riding, must have struck Niué as decidedly vulgar.
It was during the first few days of my stay that I attained a
distinction that I had never hoped to see, and that I am not at all
likely to see again. I was made a headline; in a copybook! If that is
not fame, what is?
The native school-teacher--a brown, black-eyed and bearded man of middle
age and dignified presence--had called at my house shortly after my
arrival, to display his English and his importance, and welcome the
stranger. He wanted, among a great many other things, to know what my
name was, and how it was spelt. I wrote it down for him, and he
carried it away, studying it the while. Next day, the copies set in the
principal school for the youth of Niué consisted of my name in full,
heading the following legend: “While this lady is in Niué, we must all
be very good.” Evidently a case of “Après moi le déluge!”
Sitting on a box in my cool little shady house of a morning, writing
on my knee, with the whisper of the palms about the door, and the
empty changeless blue sea lying below, I used to receive visitor after
visitor, calling on different errands--some to sit on the verandah
and look at me in silence; some to come in, squat on the floor, and
discourse fluently for half an hour in a language I did not understand
(they never seemed distressed by the absence of replies); some to sell
curios; some to give dinners!
You give dinners in Niué in a strictly literal sense. Instead of
bringing the guest to the dinner, you take the dinner to the guests and
then wait to see it eaten. It generally consists of a baked fish wrapped
in leaves, several lumps of yam, hot and moist, and as heavy as iron, a
pudding made of mashed pumpkin and breadfruit, another made of bananas,
sugarcane, and cocoanut, some arrowroot boiled to jelly, and the
inevitable taro top and cocoanut cream--about which I must confess I was
rather greedy. The rest of the dinner I used to accept politely, as
it was set out on the floor, eat a morsel or two here and there, and
afterwards hand over the remainder to Kuru and his wife, who were always
ready to dispose of it. At the beginning, I used to offer gifts in
return, which were always refused. Then, acting on the advice of old
residents, I reserved the gift for a day or two, and presented it at the
first suitable opportunity. It was always readily accepted, when offered
after this fashion, and thus I learned one more lesson as to island
etiquette.
“You’ll see a lot of stuff in travel books,” said an old resident to
me, “about the wonderful generosity of the island people, all over the
Pacific--how they press gifts of every kind on travellers, and won’t
take any return. Well, that’s true, and it’s not true. All the island
people love strangers, and are new-fangled with every fresh face, and
they do come along with presents, but as to not wanting a return, why,
that isn’t quite the case. They won’t take payment, mostly, and there’s
very few places where they’ll even take a present, right off. But they
always expect something back, some time. I know that isn’t what the
books say, but books are mostly wrong about anything you’ve got to go
below the top of things to see--and the traveller likes that pretty
idea, of getting presents for nothing, too much to give it up easily.
Still, you may take my word for it that the natives _will_ take a return
for anything and everything they give you, here and everywhere else,
unless it’s a drink of cocoanut, or a bit of fruit they offer you on
the road, or maybe a bit of dinner, if you’d drop in on them at meals.
Set presents you’ve got to pay for, and more than their value too, if
you take them. I don’t myself, I find native presents too expensive.”
What do you want to give? Oh, well, if a woman brings you in a dinner
or two, give her a trade silk handkerchief, one of those shilling ones,
some day. Or if they bring you baskets of fruit, give them a couple of
sticks of tobacco. They’ll take payment for fruit here, in that way, at
any time. You’ll need to give some things when you’re going away, to the
people you’ve seen most of--a few yards of cotton, or something of
that kind. White people are expected to give presents, all over the
island--it needn’t be dear things, but it ought to be something.
If the lords and folk who have been round the Pacific in their yachts
only heard what the natives say of them, because they didn’t know that,
they’d take care to bring a case or two of cheap stuff for presents next
time. ‘Not chief-like,’ is what the natives say--and I ask you yourself,
it isn’t ‘chief-like,’ is it, to take all you can get, and give not a
stick of niggerhead or an inch of ribbon in return?
I’d think they’d be too proud--but then, I’m not a tourist trotting
round the globe, I’m only a man who works for his living.
“As for yourself, you take my advice, and say right out you don’t want
the dinners, when they bring them. Yes, it’ll offend them, but you must
either do that, or pay for stuff you don’t want three days out of seven,
or six days, more likely, if they think you’re liberal-minded. You’ll
get no end of presents when you’re going away, pretty things enough, and
those will have to be paid for in presents, too. Better make it as cheap
as you can, meantime.
“But those people who go travelling like princes, and load their cabins
up with spears and clubs and tappa-cloths and shells the natives have
given them everywhere they went--and not a farthing, or a farthing’s
worth, do they let it cost them from end to end--I tell you, they’re a
disgrace to England,” concluded my informant hotly.
[Illustration: 0259]
“I am quite sure it is simply because they do not know--how should
they?” I asked, trying to defend the absent globe-trotters.
“Decent feeling ought to teach them!” declared the critic of manners,
who was evidently not to be pacified.
I had my dinner to cook, so I went away, and left him still revolving
the iniquities of travelling milords in his memory. But I did not forget
the conversation, for it seemed to me that the facts about this matter
of present-giving and taking ought to be known as widely as possible. In
nearly two years of island travel that followed after those days, I had
full opportunity of proving the truth of the statements made by my Niué
acquaintance, and every experience only served to confirm them.
Travellers who visit the islands should note this fact, and lay in a
stock of suitable goods at Sydney, which is the starting point for most
Pacific travel. There are various firms who make a speciality of island
trade, and these will usually sell any reasonable quantity at wholesale
prices. The natives of the Pacific, in general, are not to be put off
with worthless trifles as presents, nor do they care for beads, unless
in the few groups still remaining uncivilised. They like best the sort
of goods with which they are already familiar, and do not care for
“imported” novelties. Silk handkerchiefs are liked everywhere, and
they are easy to carry. Cotton or silk stuff is much valued. Imitation
jewellery--brooches, pins, etc.--is valued quite as much as real, except
in Niué, where the natives seem to have a natural craving and liking
for precious metals. Tinned foods of all kinds, and sweets, are perhaps
better appreciated than anything else. Tinned salmon in especial, is
the safest kind of “tip” than can be given to any native, from a lordly
Samoan chief, down to a wild “bushie” from the Solomons.
Withal, one must not take away the character of the island world for
hospitality, because of its childlike fancy for presents. Many and many
a destitute white man can tell of the true generosity and ungrudging
kindness he has met with at the hands of the gentle brown men and women,
when luck was hard and the whites would have none of him. They are not
fair-weather friends, in the European sense of the word. True, when the
weather is sunny with you, they will come round and bask in the warmth,
and share your good luck. But when the rainy days come, they will share
all they have with you, just as freely, and they will not look for
presents, then.
The industries of the island filled up many a pleasant morning. Niué
is supposed to be the most hard-working of all the Pacific islands, and
certainly its people do not seem to eat the bread of idleness. Here,
there is no lounging and dreaming and lotus-eating on the sounding coral
shore--perhaps there isn’t much shore anyway; perhaps because the Savage
Islander is not made that way. The food of the people consists largely
of yams, and in a country which has hardly any depth of soil, these are
hard to grow, and need care. The bananas are grown in the most wonderful
way in the clefts of the coral rocks, so that they actually appear to be
springing out of the stone. Copra is made in fair quantity, and many
of the people spend the greater part of their time collecting a certain
kind of fungus which is exported to Sydney, and used (or so report
declares) for making an imitation of birds’ nest soup in China.
[Illustration: 0267]
The proportion of women on the island is very large, because there
are always at least a thousand men, out of a total population of five
thousand souls, away working elsewhere. The Niuéan is a bit of a miser,
and will do anything for money. He engages, therefore, as a labourer in
the plantations of Samoa, where the natives will not do any work they
can avoid, or goes up to Malden Island to the guano pits, or takes a
year or two at sea on an island schooner, or goes away as fireman on the
missionary steamer--anything to make money. Meantime his women-kind stay
at home and keep themselves. They work about the white people’s houses,
they act as stevedores to the ships, they fetch and carry all over the
island. When I wanted two heavy trunks conveyed a distance of six miles
one day, four sturdy Niué girls came to do the work; slung the trunks
on two poles, trotted away with them, and reached the end of the journey
before my lazy horse had managed to carry me to my destination. They do
an immense amount of plaiting work--mats, fans, baskets, and above all,
hats, of which the annual export runs into thousands of dozens. These
hats are made of fine strips of dried and split pandanus leaf; they much
resemble the coarser kind of Panama, and give excellent shade and wear.
They are worn over the whole Pacific, and a great part of New Zealand,
and, I strongly suspect, are exported to England under the name, and at
the price of second-grade Panamas. A clever worker will finish one in
a day. Much of the plaiting is done in caves in the hot season, as the
material must be kept fairly cool and moist.
[Illustration: 0276]
When the Niué folks are not working, they idle a little at times,
but not very much. They sing in chorus occasionally, but it is not
an absorbing occupation with them, and they do not dance a great deal
either, since the advent of missionary rule. Their chief amusement is
an odd one--walking round the island. You can scarcely take a long ride
without encountering a stray picnic party of natives, mostly women,
striding along at a good round pace, and heavily laden with fruit,
food, and mats. They always complete the journey--forty miles--in a
day, picknicking on the roadside for meals, and seem to enjoy themselves
thoroughly. The strenuous life, exemplified after this fashion, is
certainly the last thing one would expect to find in the Pacific. But
then, the great fascination of the island world lies in the fact that
here, as nowhere else, “only the unexpected happens.”
*****
It is a day of molten gold, with a sea coloured like a sheet of sapphire
glass in a cathedral window. I am busy washing up my breakfast things
at the door (there is no false shame about the performance of domestic
duties in the capital city of Niué) when a couple of native girls appear
on the grass pathway, their wavy hair loose and flowing, their white
muslin dresses kilted up high over strong brown limbs. Each carries
a clean “pareo” in her hand. They are going for a swim, one of them
informs me in broken English: will I come too?
Of course I will. I get out my own bathing dress, and follow the pair
down the cliff, scrambling perilously from crag to crag, until we reach
a point where it is possible to get down on to the narrow rocky ledge at
the verge of the sea. Within the reef here there is a splendid stretch
of protected water, peacock-blue in colour, immensely deep, and almost
cold. There are no sharks about here, the girls tell me, and it is an
excellent place for a swim.
[Illustration: 0288]
Oh, for a Royal Academician to paint the picture made by the younger
girl, as she stands on the edge of the rocks ready to leap in, dressed
in a bright blue scarf that is wound round and round her graceful bronze
body from shoulder to knee, and parting her full wavy hair aside with
slender dark fingers! Beauty of form did not die out with the ancient
Greeks: the Diana of the Louvre and the Medici Venus may be seen any day
of any year, on the shores of the far-away islands, by those who know
lovely line when they see it, and have not given over their senses,
bound and blinded, to the traditions of the schools. If there is any man
in the world to-day who can handle a hammer and chisel as Phidias did,
let him come to the South Sea Islands and look there for the models
that made the ancient Greek immortal. The sculptor who can mould a young
island girl, Tahitian for the Venus type, Samoan for the Diana, or
a young island chief, like Mercury, in bronze, will give the world
something as exquisite and as immortal as any marvel from the hand of
Phidias or Praxiteles.
My beautiful Niué girl was an exception, so far as her own island went.
Niué women are strong and well made, but not lovely as a rule. Her
companion was as sturdy as a cart-horse, but as plain as a pig. She
smoked a huge pipe, chewed plug tobacco, and laughed like a hyena. They
were truly a well-contrasted pair.
The reef was a good way off, so we all struck out for that, when we
came up panting and blowing from our dive. The girls gave me a fine
exhibition of under-water swimming now and then, slipping easily
underneath the gleaming surface, and disappearing from view below, for
so long a time that one became quite nervous. My pretty little friend
persuaded me to accompany her once, and though I did not like it among
the ugly-looking coral caves, I dived for a short time, and endeavoured
to follow her flying heels.
Under water among the coral reefs! It sounds romantic, but it was not
pleasant. Five feet beneath the surface, the light was as clear as day,
and one could see all about one, far too much, for the things that were
visible were disquieting. I knew extremely well that coral reefs are the
haunt of every kind of unpleasant sea-beast, and I fancied Victor Hugo’s
“pieuvre” at the very least, within the gloomy arch of every cave. There
were far too many fish also, and they were much too impertinent, and a
fish in one’s hair, even if harmless, is not nice. I had not gone down
much over a fathom, when I turned, and began to beat upwards again
looking eagerly at the light. And then I saw a thing that as nearly as
possible made me open my mouth and drown myself.
It was merely a bunch of black waving trailers, coming out of the dark
of the rocks, and spreading between me and the pale-green light of day.
I did not know what it was, and I do not know, to this day. And, like
the runaway soldier in the poem, “I don’t know where I went to, for I
didn’t stop to see.” I was on the top of the water, twenty yards away,
and swimming at racing speed, when I realised the fact that I was still
alive, some moments later. And on the surface I stayed, for the rest
of the swim. The native girls were exceedingly amused, for the islander
fears nothing that is in the water or under it; but I did not mind their
laughing.
One of them then, as she swam along, began laying her mouth to the
surface of the water, and blowing bubbles, laughing all the time. She
insisted that I should do it too, and I imitated her, at which she
seemed delighted. “That what we doing, suppose some shark come,” she
explained, “shark he plenty frighten, no like that.”
We practised this useful accomplishment for some time, and then
went ashore again. I regret to say that I roused the amusement of my
companions yet again, before we landed, by making hasty exclamations,
and dodging rapidly away from the embraces of a black-and-white banded
snake, about four feet long, that suddenly appeared from nowhere in
particular, moving very swiftly, and seemed disposed to argue the right
of way. The lagoon at Raratonga had not prepared me for the Zoological
Garden in which one had to bathe at Niué.
“Snake he no harm,” said my Venus Anadyomene, as she stood on the rock,
with her bathing scarf in her hand, wringing it out in the calmest
manner in the world.
“Plenty-plenty snake stop there.”
There were indeed plenty of snakes. One could see them any fine day from
the top of the cliffs, gliding through the water below, or lying on
the rocks in family parties of a score or two, conspicuous at a great
distance, because of their handsome black-and-white banded skins. As
to there being no harm--well, I never heard of any one in Niué
being injured. But a boy in Fiji trod on one of these checkerboarded
creatures, about that time, and died in half an hour from its bite. I am
strongly inclined to think that the Niué snake is poisonous, like almost
all sea-snakes, though it does not seem at all ready to attack.
What was it I saw under water? I never knew, but I guessed as much as
I wanted, a day or two later, when I saw a native, fishing on the
reef near my bathing-place, draw up a big devil-fish, with eight limp
dangling arms’ over six feet long, and carry it away. A trader told me
that he had once pulled up one himself, while out fishing in a light
canoe, and that it seized hold of the little boat, and made such a fight
that he barely escaped with his life. It is the pleasant habit of this
fish, when attacked by a human being, to fling its hideous tentacles
over his head and face, and force them up into eyes, nostrils, and
mouth, so as to suffocate him, if he cannot master the creature.
“Do you think there were any sharks about the day I bathed?” I inquired.
“Well, if the girls were blowing, I should say there must have been.
They wouldn’t do it for fun altogether,” he replied.
“Surely they wouldn’t bathe, if they knew there were any about?”
“Oh, wouldn’t they, though! _They_ don’t mind them. No native is afraid
of anything in the sea.”
I believed this with reservations, until a day came in another island,
when I nearly furnished a dinner for a shark myself, and thenceforth
gave up bathing in unprotected tropical waters, for good. It was in
Rakahanga, many hundreds of miles nearer the Line, and I had left the
schooner to enjoy a walk and a bathe. A native Rakahangan girl, who had
never seen a white woman before, and was wildly excited at the thought
of going bathing with this unknown wonder, found a boat for me, and
allowed me to pick my own place in the inner lagoon of the island. I
chose a spot where the lagoon narrowed into a bottle-neck communicating
with the sea, and we-started our swim. The girl, however, much to my
surprise, would not go more than a few yards from the boat, and declined
to follow me when I struck out for the open water. I had been assured
by her, so far as my scanty knowledge of Maori allowed me to understand,
that there were no sharks, so her conduct seemed incomprehensible until
a stealthy black fin, shaped like the mainsail of a schooner, rose out
of the water a few score yards away, and began making for me!
The native girl was first into the boat, but I was assuredly not long
after her. The back fin did not follow, once I was out of the water. But
the heat of that burning day far up towards the Line, was hardly enough
to warm me, for half an hour afterwards.
I found, on asking the question that I should have asked first of all,
that the bottle-neck entrance of the lagoon was a perfect death-trap of
sharks, and that more than one native had been eaten there.
“Why on earth did the girl tell me there were none, and why did she
venture into such a place herself?” I asked.
“Well,” said the only white man on the island, “I should think she knew
that any shark will take a white person, and leave a native, if there’s
a choice. And if you had that red bathing-dress on that you’re carrying,
why, you were simply making bait of yourself!”
“But why should she want to see me killed?”
“Oh, she didn’t. She only wanted to have the fun of a bathe with a white
woman, and just took the chances!”
So much about bathing, in the “sunny isles of Eden.” One is sorry to
be obliged to say that it is one of the disappointments of the Pacific.
Warm, brilliant water, snowy coral sands, and glancing fish of rainbow
hues, are charming accompaniments to a bath, no doubt, but they are too
dearly paid for when snakes, sharks, sting-rays, and devil-fish have to
be counted into the party.
*****
Nothing in curious Niué is quite so curious as the native fancies about
ghosts and devils. In spite of their Christianity, they still hold fast
to all their ancient superstitions about the powers of evil.
Every Savage Islander believes, quite as a matter of course, that ghosts
walk the roads and patrol the lonely bush, all night long. Some are
harmless spirits, many are malignant devils. After dark has fallen,
about six o’clock, no one dares to leave his house except for some very
important errand; and if it is necessary to go out so late as nine
or ten o’clock, a large party will go together--this even in the town
itself. Every native has a dog or two, of a good barking watchdog breed,
not to protect property, for theft is unknown, but to drive away ghosts
at night! Devil possession is believed in firmly. When a man, takes
sick, his neighbours try, in a friendly manner, to “drive the devil out
of him.” Perhaps they hang him up by his thumbs; possibly they put his
feet in boiling water, causing fearful scalds; or they may drive sharks’
teeth into him here and there. But the most popular method is plain and
simple squeezing, to squeeze the devil out! This often results in broken
ribs, and occasionally in death. It is a curious fact, in connection
with this “squeezing,” that the natives are remarkably expert
“masseurs,” and can “drive the devil” out of a sprain, or a headache, or
an attack of neuralgia, by what seems to be a clever combination of the
“pétrissage” and “screw” movement of massage. This, they say, annoys
the devil so much that he goes away. Applied to the trunk, however,
and carried out with the utmost strength of two or three powerful men,
Savage Islander massage is-(as above stated) often fatal--and small
wonder!
When a man has died, from natural or unnatural causes, a great feast
is held of baked pig and fowl, yams, taro, fish, and cocoanuts. Presents
are given to the dead man’s relatives, as at a wedding, and other
presents are returned by them to the men who dig the grave. The corpse
is placed in a shallow hole, wrapped in costly mats; and then begins
the ghostly life of the once-loved husband or father, who now becomes a
haunting terror to those of his own household. Over his grave they erect
a massive tomb of concrete and lime, meant to discourage him, so far
as possible, from coming out to revisit the upper world. They gather
together roots of the splendid scarlet poinsettia, gorgeous hibiscus,
and graceful wine-coloured foliage plants, and place them about his
tomb, to make it attractive to him. They collect his most cherished
possessions--his “papalangi” (white man’s) bowler hat, which he used to
wear on Sundays at the five long services in the native church; his best
trousers; his orange-coloured singlet with pink bindings; his tin mug
and plate--and place them on the grave. Savage Island folk are very
avaricious and greedy; yet not a soul will dare to touch these valuable
goods; they lie on the grave, in sun and storm, until rotted or
broken. If it is a woman’s grave, you may even see her little hand
sewing-machine (almost every island in the Pacific possesses scores
of these) placed on the tomb, to amuse the ghost in its leisure hours.
There will be a bottle of cocoanut hair-oil, too, scented with “tieré”
flowers, and perhaps a little looking-glass or comb--so that we can
picture the spirit of the dark-eyed island girls, like mermaids, coming
forth at night to sit in the moonlight and dress their glossy hair--if
ghosts indeed have hair like mortal girls!
[Illustration: 0296]
Mosquito-curtains, somewhat tattered by the wind, can be seen on many
graves, carefully stretched over the tomb on the regulation uprights
and cross-pieces, as over a bed. This is, no doubt, intended to help the
ghost to lie quiet, lest the mosquitoes should annoy it so much that it
be driven to get up and walk about. Certainly, if a Savage Island ghost
does walk, it is not because every care is not taken to make it (as the
Americans would say) “stay put.”
There are no graveyards on the island. Every man is buried on his own
land, very often alongside the road, or close to his house. The thrifty
islanders plant onions and pumpkins on the earth close about the tomb,
and enjoy the excellent flavour imparted to these vegetables by the
essence of dead ancestor which they suck up through the soil. In odd
contradiction to this economical plan, a “tapu” is placed upon all the
cocoanut trees owned by the deceased; and for a year or more valuable
nuts are allowed to lie where they fall, sprouting into young plants,
and losing many tons of copra annually to the island. Groups of palms
unhealthily crowded together, bear witness everywhere to the antiquity
of this strange practice.
The main, and indeed the only good road, across the island, owns a
spot of fearsome reputation. On a solitary tableland, swept by salt
sea-winds, stand certain groups of clustered cocoa-palms, sprung from
tapu’s nuts on dead men’s lands. Here the natives say, the ghosts and
devils have great power, and it is dangerous to walk there at night
alone, even for white men, who take little account of native spirits.
Many of the white traders of the island are shy of the spot; and some
say that when riding in parties across the island at night, their horses
shy and bolt passing the place, and exhibit unaccountable fear. Only a
year or two ago, a terrible thing happened in this desolate spot, as
if to prove the truth of local traditions. There was one native of the
island, a “witch-doctor,” learned in charms and spells, who professed
not to be afraid of the devils. He could manage them, he said; and to
prove it, he used sometimes to walk alone across the island at night.
One morning, he did not return from an excursion of this nature. The
villagers set out in a body to look for him in the broad light of the
tropical sun. They found him, at the haunted spot, lying on the ground
dead. His face was black and his body horribly contorted. The devils
had fought him, and conquered him--so the natives said. And now no gold
would induce a Savage Islander to pass the fatal spot after dark.
I asked the white missionary doctor resident at the time of my visit on
the island, if he could account for the death. He said that he had not
held a post-mortem and therefore could not say what the cause might be;
but the appearance of the corpse was undoubtedly as described by the
natives.
Being anxious to investigate the truth of these stories, I determined
to spend a night on the spot, and see what happened. The natives were
horrified beyond measure at the idea; and when an accident on a coral
reef laid me up from walking exercise until just before the schooner
called again at the island to take me away--thus preventing me from
carrying out the plan--they were one and all convinced that the fall
was the work of devils, anxious to prevent me from meddling with their
doings!
The problem, then, remained unsolved, and rests open to any other
traveller to investigate. But as Savage Island lies far off the track
of the wandering tourist, its ghosts are likely to remain undisturbed in
their happy hunting-grounds for the present.
Mrs. Joe Gargery would certainly have liked Niué, for it is a place
where there is none of the “pompeying” so obnoxious to her Spartan soul.
And yet, if you stay there long, you will find out that Savage Island
practises certain of the early Christian virtues, if it has dropped a
few of its luxuries manufactured by civilisation. If you want a horse to
ride across the island--a gentle, native creature that goes off at both
ends, like a fire-cracker, when you try to mount, biting and kicking
simultaneously, and, when mounted, converts your ride into a sandwich of
jibbing and bolting, you will call in at the nearest trader’s, and tell
him you want his horse and his neighbour’s saddle and whip. All these
will appear at your door, with a couple of kindly messages, in half an
hour. You will time your arrival at the different villages so as to hit
off some one’s meal-hours, walk in, ask for a help of the inevitable
curried tin, and carry off a loaf of bread or a lump of cake, if your
host happens to have baked that morning and you have not. When a ship
comes in--perhaps the bi-yearly steamer from Samoa, with real mutton
and beef in her ice-chest--and the capital gorges for two days, you,
the stranger within their gates, will meet hot chops walking up to your
verandah between two hot plates, and find confectioners’ paper bags full
of priceless New Zealand potatoes, sitting on your doorstep. You will
learn to shed tears of genuine emotion at the sight of a rasher of
bacon, and to accept with modest reluctance the almost too valuable gift
of one real onion. Hospitality among the white folk of Savage Island
is hospitality, and no mistake, and its real generosity can only be
appreciated by those who know the supreme importance assumed by “daily
bread,” when the latter is dependent upon the rare and irregular calls
of passing ships.
For, like a good many Pacific Islands, this coral land is more beautiful
than fertile. Its wild fantastic rocks, which make up the whole surface
of the island, produce in their clefts and hollows enough yam, taro,
banana, and papaw to feed the natives; but the white man wants more.
Tins are his only resource--tins and biscuits, for flour does not keep
long, and bread is often unattainable. Fowls or eggs can seldom be
bought, for the reason that some one imported a number of cats many
years ago; these were allowed to run wild in the bush, and have now
become wild in earnest, devouring fowls, and even attacking dogs and
young pigs at times. Why, then, if the island is valueless to Europeans,
and the life hard, do white men live in Savage Island and many similar
places? For the reason that fortunes have been piled up, in past years,
by trading in such isolated spots, and that there is still money to
be made, though not so much as of old. Trading in the Pacific is a
double-barrelled sort of business. You settle down on an island where
there is a good supply of copra (dried cocoa-nut kernel, manufactured
by the natives). You buy the copra from the islanders at about £8 a
ton, store it away in your copra-house until the schooner or the steamer
calls, and then ship it off to Sydney, where it sells at £13 to £14 a
ton. Freight and labour in storing and getting on board, eat into the
profits. But, in addition to buying, the trader sells. He has a store,
where cheap prints, violent perfumes, gaudy jewellery, tapes and buttons
and pins and needles, tins of beef, shoes, etc., are sold to the
natives at a price which leaves a very good profit on their cost down in
Auckland.
The laws of all the Pacific Colonies forbid the white trader to buy from
the natives, except with cash; but, as the cash comes back to him before
long over the counter of the store, it comes to much the same in the end
as the old barter system of the early days, out of which money used to
be, quickly and easily made. Sometimes the trader, if in a small way
of business, sells his copra to captains of calling ships at a smaller
price than the Auckland value. But nowadays so many stores are owned by
big Auckland and Sydney firms that most of the stuff is shipped off for
sale in New Zealand or Australia. “Panama” hats, already mentioned,
are a very important article of commerce here. Every island has some
speciality of its own besides the inevitable copra; and the trader
deals in all he can get. The trader’s life is, as a rule, a pleasant
one enough. Savage Island is one of the worst places where he could find
himself; and yet the days pass happily enough in that solitary outlier
of civilisation. There is not much work to do; the climate is never
inconveniently hot; the scenery, especially among the up-country
primaeval forests, is very lovely. There is a good deal of riding and
bathing, a little shooting, and a myriad of wild and fantastic caves to
explore when the spirit moves one. The native canoes are easy to manage
and excellent to fish from.
[Illustration: 0303]
It is traditional in Savage Island for the few white people--almost all
rival traders--to hang together, and live in as friendly a manner as a
great family party. If the great world is shut out, its cares are shut
away, and life sits lightly on all. No one can be extravagant; no
one can “keep up appearances” at the cost of comfort; no one is
over-anxious, or worried, or excited over anything’--except when the
rare, the long-expected ship comes in, and the natives rend the air with
yells of joy, and the girls cocoanut-oil their hair, and the white men
rush for clean duck suits and fresh hats, and the mails come in, and the
news is distributed, and cargoes go out, and every one feasts from dawn
till dusk, and all the island is in a state of frantic ebullition for at
least three days. Then, indeed, Niué is alive.
We were all getting hungry when the _Duchess_ came in again, after
nearly two months’ absence, for provisions were short, and most of
us had come down to eating little green parrots out of the bush, and
enjoying them, for want of anything better. It was certainly tantalising
to see the ship off the island beating about for three days and more,
before she was able to approach, but that is an usual incident in Niué.
She came up at last, and I got my traps on board, and paid my bills, and
carried away the model canoes and shell necklaces, and plaited hats and
baskets, that were brought me as parting presents, and gave-a number of
yards of cotton cloth, and a good many silk handkerchiefs, in return.
And so the big sails were hoisted once more with a merry rattling and
flapping, and away we went, northward a thousand miles, to desolate,
burning Penrhyn and Malden Island.