I had occasion to see much of this excellent man.  He sailed with
us from Tai-o-hae to Hiva-oa, a dead beat of ninety miles against a
heavy sea.  It was what is called a good passage, and a feather in
the Casco's cap; but among the most miserable forty hours that any
one of us had ever passed.  We were swung and tossed together all
that time like shot in a stage thunder-box.  The mate was thrown
down and had his head cut open; the captain was sick on deck; the
cook sick in the galley.  Of all our party only two sat down to
dinner.  I was one.  I own that I felt wretchedly; and I can only
say of the other, who professed to feel quite well, that she fled
at an early moment from the table.  It was in these circumstances
that we skirted the windward shore of that indescribable island of
Ua-pu; viewing with dizzy eyes the coves, the capes, the breakers,
the climbing forests, and the inaccessible stone needles that
surmount the mountains.  The place persists, in a dark corner of
our memories, like a piece of the scenery of nightmares.  The end
of this distressful passage, where we were to land our passengers,
was in a similar vein of roughness.  The surf ran high on the beach
at Taahauku; the boat broached-to and capsized; and all hands were
submerged.  Only the brother himself, who was well used to the
experience, skipped ashore, by some miracle of agility, with scarce
a sprinkling.  Thenceforward, during our stay at Hiva-oa, he was
our cicerone and patron; introducing us, taking us excursions,
serving us in every way, and making himself daily more beloved.

Michel Blanc had been a carpenter by trade; had made money and
retired, supposing his active days quite over; and it was only when
he found idleness dangerous that he placed his capital and
acquirements at the service of the mission.  He became their
carpenter, mason, architect, and engineer; added sculpture to his
accomplishments, and was famous for his skill in gardening.  He
wore an enviable air of having found a port from life's contentions
and lying there strongly anchored; went about his business with a
jolly simplicity; complained of no lack of results--perhaps shyly
thinking his own statuary result enough; and was altogether a
pattern of the missionary layman.



CHAPTER VIII--THE PORT OF ENTRY



The port--the mart, the civil and religious capital of these rude
islands--is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a
precipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva.  It was midwinter when we came
thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant.
Now the wind blew squally from the land down gaps of splintered
precipice; now, between the sentinel islets of the entry, it came
in gusts from seaward.  Heavy and dark clouds impended on the
summits; the rain roared and ceased; the scuppers of the mountain
gushed; and the next day we would see the sides of the amphitheatre
bearded with white falls.  Along the beach the town shows a thin
file of houses, mostly white, and all ensconced in the foliage of
an avenue of green puraos; a pier gives access from the sea across
the belt of breakers; to the eastward there stands, on a projecting
bushy hill, the old fort which is now the calaboose, or prison;
eastward still, alone in a garden, the Residency flies the colours
of France.  Just off Calaboose Hill, the tiny Government schooner
rides almost permanently at anchor, marks eight bells in the
morning (there or thereabout) with the unfurling of her flag, and
salutes the setting sun with the report of a musket.

Here dwell together, and share the comforts of a club (which may be
enumerated as a billiard-board, absinthe, a map of the world on
Mercator's projection, and one of the most agreeable verandahs in
the tropics), a handful of whites of varying nationality, mostly
French officials, German and Scottish merchant clerks, and the
agents of the opium monopoly.  There are besides three tavern-
keepers, the shrewd Scot who runs the cotton gin-mill, two white
ladies, and a sprinkling of people 'on the beach'--a South Sea
expression for which there is no exact equivalent.  It is a
pleasant society, and a hospitable.  But one man, who was often to
be seen seated on the logs at the pier-head, merits a word for the
singularity of his history and appearance.  Long ago, it seems, he
fell in love with a native lady, a High Chiefess in Ua-pu.  She, on
being approached, declared she could never marry a man who was
untattooed; it looked so naked; whereupon, with some greatness of
soul, our hero put himself in the hands of the Tahukus, and, with
still greater, persevered until the process was complete.  He had
certainly to bear a great expense, for the Tahuku will not work
without reward; and certainly exquisite pain.  Kooamua, high chief
as he was, and one of the old school, was only part tattooed; he
could not, he told us with lively pantomime, endure the torture to
an end.  Our enamoured countryman was more resolved; he was
tattooed from head to foot in the most approved methods of the art;
and at last presented himself before his mistress a new man.  The
fickle fair one could never behold him from that day except with
laughter.  For my part, I could never see the man without a kind of
admiration; of him it might be said, if ever of any, that he had
loved not wisely, but too well.

The Residency stands by itself, Calaboose Hill screening it from
the fringe of town along the further bay.  The house is commodious,
with wide verandahs; all day it stands open, back and front, and
the trade blows copiously over its bare floors.  On a week-day the
garden offers a scene of most untropical animation, half a dozen
convicts toiling there cheerfully with spade and barrow, and
touching hats and smiling to the visitor like old attached family
servants.  On Sunday these are gone, and nothing to be seen but
dogs of all ranks and sizes peacefully slumbering in the shady
grounds; for the dogs of Tai-o-hae are very courtly-minded, and
make the seat of Government their promenade and place of siesta.
In front and beyond, a strip of green down loses itself in a low
wood of many species of acacia; and deep in the wood a ruinous wall
encloses the cemetery of the Europeans.  English and Scottish sleep
there, and Scandinavians, and French maitres de manoeuvres and
maitres ouvriers:  mingling alien dust.  Back in the woods,
perhaps, the blackbird, or (as they call him there) the island
nightingale, will be singing home strains; and the ceaseless
requiem of the surf hangs on the ear.  I have never seen a resting-
place more quiet; but it was a long thought how far these sleepers
had all travelled, and from what diverse homes they had set forth,
to lie here in the end together.

On the summit of its promontory hill, the calaboose stands all day
with doors and window-shutters open to the trade.  On my first
visit a dog was the only guardian visible.  He, indeed, rose with
an attitude so menacing that I was glad to lay hands on an old
barrel-hoop; and I think the weapon must have been familiar, for
the champion instantly retreated, and as I wandered round the court
and through the building, I could see him, with a couple of
companions, humbly dodging me about the corners.  The prisoners'
dormitory was a spacious, airy room, devoid of any furniture; its
whitewashed walls covered with inscriptions in Marquesan and rude
drawings:  one of the pier, not badly done; one of a murder;
several of French soldiers in uniform.  There was one legend in
French:  'Je n'est' (sic) 'pas le sou.'  From this noontide
quietude it must not be supposed the prison was untenanted; the
calaboose at Tai-o-hae does a good business.  But some of its
occupants were gardening at the Residency, and the rest were
probably at work upon the streets, as free as our scavengers at
home, although not so industrious.  On the approach of evening they
would be called in like children from play; and the harbour-master
(who is also the jailer) would go through the form of locking them
up until six the next morning.  Should a prisoner have any call in
town, whether of pleasure or affairs, he has but to unhook the
window-shutters; and if he is back again, and the shutter decently
replaced, by the hour of call on the morrow, he may have met the
harbour-master in the avenue, and there will be no complaint, far
less any punishment.  But this is not all.  The charming French
Resident, M. Delaruelle, carried me one day to the calaboose on an
official visit.  In the green court, a very ragged gentleman, his
legs deformed with the island elephantiasis, saluted us smiling.
'One of our political prisoners--an insurgent from Raiatea,' said
the Resident; and then to the jailer:  'I thought I had ordered him
a new pair of trousers.'  Meanwhile no other convict was to be
seen--'Eh bien,' said the Resident, 'ou sont vos prisonniers?'
'Monsieur le Resident,' replied the jailer, saluting with soldierly
formality, 'comme c'est jour de fete, je les ai laisse aller a la
chasse.'  They were all upon the mountains hunting goats!
Presently we came to the quarters of the women, likewise deserted--
'Ou sont vos bonnes femmes?' asked the Resident; and the jailer
cheerfully responded:  'Je crois, Monsieur le Resident, qu'elles
sont allees quelquepart faire une visite.'  It had been the design
of M. Delaruelle, who was much in love with the whimsicalities of
his small realm, to elicit something comical; but not even he
expected anything so perfect as the last.  To complete the picture
of convict life in Tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that these
criminals draw a salary as regularly as the President of the
Republic.  Ten sous a day is their hire.  Thus they have money,
food, shelter, clothing, and, I was about to write, their liberty.
The French are certainly a good-natured people, and make easy
masters.  They are besides inclined to view the Marquesans with an
eye of humorous indulgence.  'They are dying, poor devils!' said M.
Delaruelle:  'the main thing is to let them die in peace.'  And it
was not only well said, but I believe expressed the general
thought.  Yet there is another element to be considered; for these
convicts are not merely useful, they are almost essential to the
French existence.  With a people incurably idle, dispirited by what
can only be called endemic pestilence, and inflamed with ill-
feeling against their new masters, crime and convict labour are a
godsend to the Government.

Theft is practically the sole crime.  Originally petty pilferers,
the men of Tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strong-
boxes.  Hundreds of dollars have been taken at a time; though, with
that redeeming moderation so common in Polynesian theft, the
Marquesan burglar will always take a part and leave a part, sharing
(so to speak) with the proprietor.  If it be Chilian coin--the
island currency--he will escape; if the sum is in gold, French
silver, or bank-notes, the police wait until the money begins to
come in circulation, and then easily pick out their man.  And now
comes the shameful part.  In plain English, the prisoner is
tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the
money.  To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to
inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible.  Even his robberies
are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the
stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his
terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he
endures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess,
become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside his
comrades.  While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention.
He had entered a house about eight in the morning, forced a trunk,
and stolen eleven hundred francs; and now, under the horrors of
darkness, solitude, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he was
reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil.  From one cache,
which he had already pointed out, three hundred francs had been
recovered, and it was expected that he would presently disgorge the
rest.  This would be ugly enough if it were all; but I am bound to
say, because it is a matter the French should set at rest, that
worse is continually hinted.  I heard that one man was kept six
days with his arms bound backward round a barrel; and it is the
universal report that every gendarme in the South Seas is equipped
with something in the nature of a thumbscrew.  I do not know this.
I never had the face to ask any of the gendarmes--pleasant,
intelligent, and kindly fellows--with whom I have been intimate,
and whose hospitality I have enjoyed; and perhaps the tale reposes
(as I hope it does) on a misconstruction of that ingenious cat's-
cradle with which the French agent of police so readily secures a
prisoner.  But whether physical or moral, torture is certainly
employed; and by a barbarous injustice, the state of accusation (in
which a man may very well be innocently placed) is positively
painful; the state of conviction (in which all are supposed guilty)
is comparatively free, and positively pleasant.  Perhaps worse
still,--not only the accused, but sometimes his wife, his mistress,
or his friend, is subjected to the same hardships.  I was admiring,
in the tapu system, the ingenuity of native methods of detection;
there is not much to admire in those of the French, and to lock up
a timid child in a dark room, and, if he proved obstinate, lock up
his sister in the next, is neither novel nor humane.

The main occasion of these thefts is the new vice of opium-eating.
'Here nobody ever works, and all eat opium,' said a gendarme; and
Ah Fu knew a woman who ate a dollar's worth in a day.  The
successful thief will give a handful of money to each of his
friends, a dress to a woman, pass an evening in one of the taverns
of Tai-o-hae, during which he treats all comers, produce a big lump
of opium, and retire to the bush to eat and sleep it off.  A
trader, who did not sell opium, confessed to me that he was at his
wit's end.  'I do not sell it, but others do,' said he.  'The
natives only work to buy it; if they walk over to me to sell their
cotton, they have just to walk over to some one else to buy their
opium with my money.  And why should they be at the bother of two
walks?  There is no use talking,' he added--'opium is the currency
of this country.'

The man under prevention during my stay at Tai-o-hae lost patience
while the Chinese opium-seller was being examined in his presence.
'Of course he sold me opium!' he broke out; 'all the Chinese here
sell opium.  It was only to buy opium that I stole; it is only to
buy opium that anybody steals.  And what you ought to do is to let
no opium come here, and no Chinamen.'  This is precisely what is
done in Samoa by a native Government; but the French have bound
their own hands, and for forty thousand francs sold native subjects
to crime and death.  This horrid traffic may be said to have sprung
up by accident.  It was Captain Hart who had the misfortune to be
the means of beginning it, at a time when his plantations
flourished in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty in keeping
Chinese coolies.  To-day the plantations are practically deserted
and the Chinese gone; but in the meanwhile the natives have learned
the vice, the patent brings in a round sum, and the needy
Government at Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets.  Of
course, the patentee is supposed to sell to Chinamen alone; equally
of course, no one could afford to pay forty thousand francs for the
privilege of supplying a scattered handful of Chinese; and every
one knows the truth, and all are ashamed of it.  French officials
shake their heads when opium is mentioned; and the agents of the
farmer blush for their employment.  Those that live in glass houses
should not throw stones; as a subject of the British crown, I am an
unwilling shareholder in the largest opium business under heaven.
But the British case is highly complicated; it implies the
livelihood of millions; and must be reformed, when it can be
reformed at all, with prudence.  This French business, on the other
hand, is a nostrum and a mere excrescence.  No native industry was
to be encouraged:  the poison is solemnly imported.  No native
habit was to be considered:  the vice has been gratuitously
introduced.  And no creature profits, save the Government at
Papeete--the not very enviable gentlemen who pay them, and the
Chinese underlings who do the dirty work.



CHAPTER IX--THE HOUSE OF TEMOANA



The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused by
the coming and going of the French.  At least twice they have
seized the archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in the
meanwhile the natives pursued almost without interruption their
desultory cannibal wars.  Through these events and changing
dynasties, a single considerable figure may be seen to move:  that
of the high chief, a king, Temoana.  Odds and ends of his history
came to my ears:  how he was at first a convert to the Protestant
mission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from his native land,
served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for small charge, in
English seaports; how he returned at last to the Marquesas, fell
under the strong and benign influence of the late bishop, extended
his influence in the group, was for a while joint ruler with the
prelate, and died at last the chief supporter of Catholicism and
the French.  His widow remains in receipt of two pounds a month
from the French Government.  Queen she is usually called, but in
the official almanac she figures as 'Madame Vaekehu, Grande
Chefesse.'  His son (natural or adoptive, I know not which),
Stanislao Moanatini, chief of Akaui, serves in Tai-o-hae as a kind
of Minister of Public Works; and the daughter of Stanislao is High
Chiefess of the southern island of Tauata.  These, then, are the
greatest folk of the archipelago; we thought them also the most
estimable.  This is the rule in Polynesia, with few exceptions; the
higher the family, the better the man--better in sense, better in
manners, and usually taller and stronger in body.  A stranger
advances blindfold.  He scrapes acquaintance as he can.  Save the
tattoo in the Marquesas, nothing indicates the difference of rank;
and yet almost invariably we found, after we had made them, that
our friends were persons of station.  I have said 'usually taller
and stronger.'  I might have been more absolute,--over all
Polynesia, and a part of Micronesia, the rule holds good; the great
ones of the isle, and even of the village, are greater of bone and
muscle, and often heavier of flesh, than any commoner.  The usual
explanation--that the high-born child is more industriously
shampooed, is probably the true one.  In New Caledonia, at least,
where the difference does not exist, has never been remarked, the
practice of shampooing seems to be itself unknown.  Doctors would
be well employed in a study of the point.

Vaekehu lives at the other end of the town from the Residency,
beyond the buildings of the mission.  Her house is on the European
plan:  a table in the midst of the chief room; photographs and
religious pictures on the wall.  It commands to either hand a
charming vista:  through the front door, a peep of green lawn,
scurrying pigs, the pendent fans of the coco-palm and splendour of
the bursting surf:  through the back, mounting forest glades and
coronals of precipice.  Here, in the strong thorough-draught, Her
Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of
royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, the
elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all
the highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above all
others) delight to sing their language.  An adopted daughter
interpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed by name our
friends of Anaho.  As we talked, we could see, through the landward
door, another lady of the household at her toilet under the green
trees; who presently, when her hair was arranged, and her hat
wreathed with flowers, appeared upon the back verandah with
gracious salutations.

Vaekehu is very deaf; 'merci' is her only word of French; and I do
not know that she seemed clever.  An exquisite, kind refinement,
with a shade of quietism, gathered perhaps from the nuns, was what
chiefly struck us.  Or rather, upon that first occasion, we were
conscious of a sense as of district-visiting on our part, and
reduced evangelical gentility on the part of our hostess.  The
other impression followed after she was more at ease, and came with
Stanislao and his little girl to dine on board the Casco.  She had
dressed for the occasion:  wore white, which very well became her
strong brown face; and sat among us, eating or smoking her
cigarette, quite cut off from all society, or only now and then
included through the intermediary of her son.  It was a position
that might have been ridiculous, and she made it ornamental; making
believe to hear and to be entertained; her face, whenever she met
our eyes, lighting with the smile of good society; her
contributions to the talk, when she made any, and that was seldom,
always complimentary and pleasing.  No attention was paid to the
child, for instance, but what she remarked and thanked us for.  Her
parting with each, when she came to leave, was gracious and pretty,
as had been every step of her behaviour.  When Mrs. Stevenson held
out her hand to say good-bye, Vaekehu took it, held it, and a
moment smiled upon her; dropped it, and then, as upon a kindly
after-thought, and with a sort of warmth of condescension, held out
both hands and kissed my wife upon both cheeks.  Given the same
relation of years and of rank, the thing would have been so done on
the boards of the Comedie Francaise; just so might Madame Brohan
have warmed and condescended to Madame Broisat in the Marquis de
Villemer.  It was my part to accompany our guests ashore:  when I
kissed the little girl good-bye at the pier steps, Vaekehu gave a
cry of gratification, reached down her hand into the boat, took
mine, and pressed it with that flattering softness which seems the
coquetry of the old lady in every quarter of the earth.  The next
moment she had taken Stanislao's arm, and they moved off along the
pier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered.  This was a queen of
cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the
greatest masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago,
before she was grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o-
hae; she had been passed from chief to chief; she had been fought
for and taken in war; perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat
on the high place, and throned it there, alone of her sex, while
the drums were going twenty strong and the priests carried up the
blood-stained baskets of long-pig.  And now behold her, out of that
past of violence and sickening feasts, step forth, in her age, a
quiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you might find at home
(mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a score of
country houses.  Only Vaekehu's mittens were of dye, not of silk;
and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh of
men.  It came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of it
herself, and whether at heart, perhaps, she might not regret and
aspire after the barbarous and stirring past.  But when I asked
Stanislao--'Ah!' said he, 'she is content; she is religious, she
passes all her days with the sisters.'

Stanislao (Stanislaos, with the final consonant evaded after the
Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America,
and there educated by the fathers.  His French is fluent, his talk
sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he
is of excellent service to the French.  With the prestige of his
name and family, and with the stick when needful, he keeps the
natives working and the roads passable.  Without Stanislao and the
convicts, I am in doubt what would become of the present regimen in
Nuka-hiva; whether the highways might not be suffered to close up,
the pier to wash away, and the Residency to fall piecemeal about
the ears of impotent officials.  And yet though the hereditary
favourer, and one of the chief props of French authority, he has
always an eye upon the past.  He showed me where the old public
place had stood, still to be traced by random piles of stone; told
me how great and fine it was, and surrounded on all sides by
populous houses, whence, at the beating of the drums, the folk
crowded to make holiday.  The drum-beat of the Polynesian has a
strange and gloomy stimulation for the nerves of all.  White
persons feel it--at these precipitate sounds their hearts beat
faster; and, according to old residents, its effect on the natives
was extreme.  Bishop Dordillon might entreat; Temoana himself
command and threaten; at the note of the drum wild instincts
triumphed.  And now it might beat upon these ruins, and who should
assemble?  The houses are down, the people dead, their lineage
extinct; and the sweepings and fugitives of distant bays and
islands encamp upon their graves.  The decline of the dance
Stanislao especially laments.  'Chaque pays a ses coutumes,' said
he; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to
increase the number of delits and the instruments of his own power,
custom after custom is placed on the expurgatorial index.  'Tenez,
une danse qui n'est pas permise,' said Stanislao:  'je ne sais pas
pourquoi, elle est tres jolie, elle va comme ca,' and sticking his
umbrella upright in the road, he sketched the steps and gestures.
All his criticisms of the present, all his regrets for the past,
struck me as temperate and sensible.  The short term of office of
the Resident he thought the chief defect of the administration;
that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he was
recalled.  I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with some
fear the coming change from a naval to a civil governor.  I am sure
at least that I regard it so myself; for the civil servants of
France have never appeared to any foreigner as at all the flower of
their country, while her naval officers may challenge competition
with the world.  In all his talk, Stanislao was particular to speak
of his own country as a land of savages; and when he stated an
opinion of his own, it was with some apologetic preface, alleging
that he was 'a savage who had travelled.'  There was a deal, in
this elaborate modesty, of honest pride.  Yet there was something
in the precaution that saddened me; and I could not but fear he was
only forestalling a taunt that he had heard too often.

I recall with interest two interviews with Stanislao.  The first
was a certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together in
the verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voices
as the showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into the
billiard-room, to consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map of
the world which forms its chief adornment.  He was naturally
ignorant of English history, so that I had much of news to
communicate.  The story of Gordon I told him in full, and many
episodes of the Indian Mutiny, Lucknow, the second battle of Cawn-
pore, the relief of Arrah, the death of poor Spottis-woode, and Sir
Hugh Rose's hotspur, midland campaign.  He was intent to hear; his
brown face, strongly marked with small-pox, kindled and changed
with each vicissitude.  His eyes glowed with the reflected light of
battle; his questions were many and intelligent, and it was chiefly
these that sent us so often to the map.  But it is of our parting
that I keep the strongest sense.  We were to sail on the morrow,
and the night had fallen, dark, gusty, and rainy, when we stumbled
up the hill to bid farewell to Stanislao.  He had already loaded us
with gifts; but more were waiting.  We sat about the table over
cigars and green cocoa-nuts; claps of wind blew through the house
and extinguished the lamp, which was always instantly relighted
with a single match; and these recurrent intervals of darkness were
felt as a relief.  For there was something painful and embarrassing
in the kindness of that separation.  'Ah, vous devriez rester ici,
mon cher ami!' cried Stanislao.  'Vous etes les gens qu'il faut
pour les Kanaques; vous etes doux, vous et votre famille; vous
seriez obeis dans toutes les iles.'  We had been civil; not always
that, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond; and all
this to-do is a measure, not of our considerateness, but of the
want of it in others.  The rest of the evening, on to Vaekehu's and
back as far as to the pier, Stanislao walked with my arm and
sheltered me with his umbrella; and after the boat had put off, we
could still distinguish, in the murky darkness, his gestures of
farewell.  His words, if there were any, were drowned by the rain
and the loud surf.

I have mentioned presents, a vexed question in the South Seas; and
one which well illustrates the common, ignorant habit of regarding
races in a lump.  In many quarters the Polynesian gives only to
receive.  I have visited islands where the population mobbed me for
all the world like dogs after the waggon of cat's-meat; and where
the frequent proposition, 'You my pleni (friend),' or (with more of
pathos) 'You all 'e same my father,' must be received with hearty
laughter and a shout.  And perhaps everywhere, among the greedy and
rapacious, a gift is regarded as a sprat to catch a whale.  It is
the habit to give gifts and to receive returns, and such
characters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly that
they do not lose.  But for persons of a different stamp the
statement must be reversed.  The shabby Polynesian is anxious till
he has received the return gift; the generous is uneasy until he
has made it.  The first is disappointed if you have not given more
than he; the second is miserable if he thinks he has given less
than you.  This is my experience; if it clash with that of others,
I pity their fortune, and praise mine:  the circumstances cannot
change what I have seen, nor lessen what I have received.  And
indeed I find that those who oppose me often argue from a ground of
singular presumptions; comparing Polynesians with an ideal person,
compact of generosity and gratitude, whom I never had the pleasure
of encountering; and forgetting that what is almost poverty to us
is wealth almost unthinkable to them.  I will give one instance:  I
chanced to speak with consideration of these gifts of Stanislao's
with a certain clever man, a great hater and contemner of Kanakas.
'Well! what were they?' he cried.  'A pack of old men's beards.
Trash!'  And the same gentleman, some half an hour later, being
upon a different train of thought, dwelt at length on the esteem in
which the Marquesans held that sort of property, how they preferred
it to all others except land, and what fancy prices it would fetch.
Using his own figures, I computed that, in this commodity alone,
the gifts of Vaekehu and Stanislao represented between two and
three hundred dollars; and the queen's official salary is of two
hundred and forty in the year.

But generosity on the one hand, and conspicuous meanness on the
other, are in the South Seas, as at home, the exception.  It is
neither with any hope of gain, nor with any lively wish to please,
that the ordinary Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts.  A
plain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly, but
without the least enthusiasm.  And we shall best understand his
attitude of mind, if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity of
marriage presents.  There we give without any special thought of a
return; yet if the circumstance arise, and the return be withheld,
we shall judge ourselves insulted.  We give them usually without
affection, and almost never with a genuine desire to please; and
our gift is rather a mark of our own status than a measure of our
love to the recipients.  So in a great measure and with the common
run of the Polynesians; their gifts are formal; they imply no more
than social recognition; and they are made and reciprocated, as we
pay and return our morning visits.  And the practice of marking and
measuring events and sentiments by presents is universal in the
island world.  A gift plays with them the part of stamp and seal;
and has entered profoundly into the mind of islanders.  Peace and
war, marriage, adoption and naturalisation, are celebrated or
declared by the acceptance or the refusal of gifts; and it is as
natural for the islander to bring a gift as for us to carry a card-
case.



CHAPTER X--A PORTRAIT AND A STORY



I have had occasion several times to name the late bishop, Father
Dordillon, 'Monseigneur,' as he is still almost universally called,
Vicar-Apostolic of the Marquesas and Bishop of Cambysopolis in
partibus.  Everywhere in the islands, among all classes and races,
this fine, old, kindly, cheerful fellow is remembered with
affection and respect.  His influence with the natives was
paramount.  They reckoned him the highest of men--higher than an
admiral; brought him their money to keep; took his advice upon
their purchases; nor would they plant trees upon their own land
till they had the approval of the father of the islands.  During
the time of the French exodus he singly represented Europe, living
in the Residency, and ruling by the hand of Temoana.  The first
roads were made under his auspices and by his persuasion.  The old
road between Hatiheu and Anaho was got under way from either side
on the ground that it would be pleasant for an evening promenade,
and brought to completion by working on the rivalry of the two
villages.  The priest would boast in Hatiheu of the progress made
in Anaho, and he would tell the folk of Anaho, 'If you don't take
care, your neighbours will be over the hill before you are at the
top.'  It could not be so done to-day; it could then; death, opium,
and depopulation had not gone so far; and the people of Hatiheu, I
was told, still vied with each other in fine attire, and used to go
out by families, in the cool of the evening, boat-sailing and
racing in the bay.  There seems some truth at least in the common
view, that this joint reign of Temoana and the bishop was the last
and brief golden age of the Marquesas.  But the civil power
returned, the mission was packed out of the Residency at twenty-
four hours' notice, new methods supervened, and the golden age
(whatever it quite was) came to an end.  It is the strongest proof
of Father Dordillon's prestige that it survived, seemingly without
loss, this hasty deposition.

His method with the natives was extremely mild.  Among these
barbarous children he still played the part of the smiling father;
and he was careful to observe, in all indifferent matters, the
Marquesan etiquette.  Thus, in the singular system of artificial
kinship, the bishop had been adopted by Vaekehu as a grandson; Miss
Fisher, of Hatiheu, as a daughter.  From that day, Monseigneur
never addressed the young lady except as his mother, and closed his
letters with the formalities of a dutiful son.  With Europeans he
could be strict, even to the extent of harshness.  He made no
distinction against heretics, with whom he was on friendly terms;
but the rules of his own Church he would see observed; and once at
least he had a white man clapped in jail for the desecration of a
saint's day.  But even this rigour, so intolerable to laymen, so
irritating to Protestants, could not shake his popularity.  We
shall best conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all have
known some divine of the old school in Scotland, a literal
Sabbatarian, a stickler for the letter of the law, who was yet in
private modest, innocent, genial and mirthful.  Much such a man, it
seems, was Father Dordillon.  And his popularity bore a test yet
stronger.  He had the name, and probably deserved it, of a shrewd
man in business and one that made the mission pay.  Nothing so much
stirs up resentment as the inmixture in commerce of religious
bodies; but even rival traders spoke well of Monseigneur.

His character is best portrayed in the story of the days of his
decline.  A time came when, from the failure of sight, he must
desist from his literary labours:  his Marquesan hymns, grammars,
and dictionaries; his scientific papers, lives of saints, and
devotional poetry.  He cast about for a new interest:  pitched on
gardening, and was to be seen all day, with spade and water-pot, in
his childlike eagerness, actually running between the borders.
Another step of decay, and he must leave his garden also.
Instantly a new occupation was devised, and he sat in the mission
cutting paper flowers and wreaths.  His diocese was not great
enough for his activity; the churches of the Marquesas were papered
with his handiwork, and still he must be making more.  'Ah,' said
he, smiling, 'when I am dead what a fine time you will have
clearing out my trash!'  He had been dead about six months; but I
was pleased to see some of his trophies still exposed, and looked
upon them with a smile:  the tribute (if I have read his cheerful
character aright) which he would have preferred to any useless
tears.  Disease continued progressively to disable him; he who had
clambered so stalwartly over the rude rocks of the Marquesas,
bringing peace to warfaring clans, was for some time carried in a
chair between the mission and the church, and at last confined to
bed, impotent with dropsy, and tormented with bed-sores and
sciatica.  Here he lay two months without complaint; and on the
11th January 1888, in the seventy-ninth year of his life, and the
thirty-fourth of his labours in the Marquesas, passed away.

Those who have a taste for hearing missions, Protestant or
Catholic, decried, must seek their pleasure elsewhere than in my
pages.  Whether Catholic or Protestant, with all their gross blots,
with all their deficiency of candour, of humour, and of common
sense, the missionaries are the best and the most useful whites in
the Pacific.  This is a subject which will follow us throughout;
but there is one part of it that may conveniently be treated here.
The married and the celibate missionary, each has his particular
advantage and defect.  The married missionary, taking him at the
best, may offer to the native what he is much in want of--a higher
picture of domestic life; but the woman at his elbow tends to keep
him in touch with Europe and out of touch with Polynesia, and to
perpetuate, and even to ingrain, parochial decencies far best
forgotten.  The mind of the female missionary tends, for instance,
to be continually busied about dress.  She can be taught with
extreme difficulty to think any costume decent but that to which
she grew accustomed on Clapham Common; and to gratify this
prejudice, the native is put to useless expense, his mind is
tainted with the morbidities of Europe, and his health is set in
danger.  The celibate missionary, on the other hand, and whether at
best or worst, falls readily into native ways of life; to which he
adds too commonly what is either a mark of celibate man at large,
or an inheritance from mediaeval saints--I mean slovenly habits and
an unclean person.  There are, of course, degrees in this; and the
sister (of course, and all honour to her) is as fresh as a lady at
a ball.  For the diet there is nothing to be said--it must amaze
and shock the Polynesian--but for the adoption of native habits
there is much.  'Chaque pays a ses coutumes,' said Stanislao; these
it is the missionary's delicate task to modify; and the more he can
do so from within, and from a native standpoint, the better he will
do his work; and here I think the Catholics have sometimes the
advantage; in the Vicariate of Dordillon, I am sure they had it.  I
have heard the bishop blamed for his indulgence to the natives, and
above all because he did not rage with sufficient energy against
cannibalism.  It was a part of his policy to live among the natives
like an elder brother; to follow where he could; to lead where it
was necessary; never to drive; and to encourage the growth of new
habits, instead of violently rooting up the old.  And it might be
better, in the long-run, if this policy were always followed.

It might be supposed that native missionaries would prove more
indulgent, but the reverse is found to be the case.  The new broom
sweeps clean; and the white missionary of to-day is often
embarrassed by the bigotry of his native coadjutor.  What else
should we expect?  On some islands, sorcery, polygamy, human
sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress of
the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms
against rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at the
same period of time, and with the like authority.  By what
criterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from the
unessential?  He swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no play
of mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in the
prohibitions, no advance.  To call things by their proper names,
this is teaching superstition.  It is unfortunate to use the word;
so few people have read history, and so many have dipped into
little atheistic manuals, that the majority will rush to a
conclusion, and suppose the labour lost.  And far from that:  These
semi-spontaneous superstitions, varying with the sect of the
original evangelist and the customs of the island, are found in
practice to be highly fructifying; and in particular those who have
learned and who go forth again to teach them offer an example to
the world.  The best specimen of the Christian hero that I ever met
was one of these native missionaries.  He had saved two lives at
the risk of his own; like Nathan, he had bearded a tyrant in his
hour of blood; when a whole white population fled, he alone stood
to his duty; and his behaviour under domestic sorrow with which the
public has no concern filled the beholder with sympathy and
admiration.  A poor little smiling laborious man he looked; and you
would have thought he had nothing in him but that of which indeed
he had too much--facile good-nature.

It chances that the only rivals of Monseigneur and his mission in
the Marquesas were certain of these brown-skinned evangelists,
natives from Hawaii.  I know not what they thought of Father
Dordillon:  they are the only class I did not question; but I
suspect the prelate to have regarded them askance, for he was
eminently human.  During my stay at Tai-o-hae, the time of the
yearly holiday came round at the girls' school; and a whole fleet
of whale-boats came from Ua-pu to take the daughters of that island
home.  On board of these was Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a
fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in
Hawaii.  He paid me a visit in the Casco, and there entertained me
with a tale of one of his colleagues, Kekela, a missionary in the
great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa.  It appears that shortly after a
kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver, the boats of an American
whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made
their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Whalon, in
the hands of the natives.  The captive, with his arms bound behind
his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the
capture to Kekela.  And here I begin to follow the version of
Kauwealoha; it is a good specimen of Kanaka English; and the reader
is to conceive it delivered with violent emphasis and speaking
pantomime.

'"I got 'Melican mate," the chief he say.  "What you go do 'Melican
mate?" Kekela he say.  "I go make fire, I go kill, I go eat him,"
he say; "you come to-mollow eat piece."  "I no WANT eat 'Melican
mate!" Kekela he say; "why you want?"  "This bad shippee, this
slave shippee," the chief he say.  "One time a shippee he come from
Pelu, he take away plenty Kanaka, he take away my son.  'Melican
mate he bad man.  I go eat him; you eat piece."  "I no WANT eat
'Melican mate!" Kekela he say; and he CLY--all night he cly!  To-
mollow Kekela he get up, he put on blackee coat, he go see chief;
he see Missa Whela, him hand tie' like this.  (Pantomime.)  Kekela
he cly.  He say chief:- "Chief, you like things of mine? you like
whale-boat?"  "Yes," he say.  "You like file-a'm?" (fire-arms).
"Yes," he say.  "You like blackee coat?"  "Yes," he say.  Kekela he
take Missa Whela by he shoul'a' (shoulder), he take him light out
house; he give chief he whale-boat, he file-a'm, he blackee coat.
He take Missa Whela he house, make him sit down with he wife and
chil'en.  Missa Whela all-the-same pelison (prison); he wife, he
chil'en in Amelica; he cly--O, he cly.  Kekela he solly.  One day
Kekela he see ship. (Pantomime.)  He say Missa Whela, "Ma' Whala?"
Missa Whela he say, "Yes."  Kanaka they begin go down beach.
Kekela he get eleven Kanaka, get oa' (oars), get evely thing.  He
say Missa Whela, "Now you go quick."  They jump in whale-boat.
"Now you low!"  Kekela he say:  "you low quick, quick!"  (Violent
pantomime, and a change indicating that the narrator has left the
boat and returned to the beach.)  All the Kanaka they say, "How!
'Melican mate he go away?"--jump in boat; low afta.  (Violent
pantomime, and change again to boat.)  Kekela he say, "Low quick!"'

Here I think Kauwealoha's pantomime had confused me; I have no more
of his ipsissima verba; and can but add, in my own less spirited
manner, that the ship was reached, Mr. Whalon taken aboard, and
Kekela returned to his charge among the cannibals.  But how unjust
it is to repeat the stumblings of a foreigner in a language only
partly acquired!  A thoughtless reader might conceive Kauwealoha
and his colleague to be a species of amicable baboon; but I have
here the anti-dote.  In return for his act of gallant charity,
Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum of
money, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch.  From
his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue, I give the
following extract.  I do not envy the man who can read it without
emotion.


'When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation,
ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I
ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these
benighted people.  I gave my boat for the stranger's life.  This
boat came from James Hunnewell, a gift of friendship.  It became
the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten
by the savages who knew not Jehovah.  This was Mr. Whalon, and the
date, Jan. 14, 1864.

As to this friendly deed of mine in saving Mr. Whalon, its seed
came from your great land, and was brought by certain of your
countrymen, who had received the love of God.  It was planted in
Hawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these dark
regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and
true, which is LOVE.

'1. Love to Jehovah.

'2. Love to self.

'3. Love to our neighbour.

'If a man have a sufficiency of these three, he is good and holy,
like his God, Jehovah, in his triune character (Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost), one-three, three-one.  If he have two and wants one,
it is not well; and if he have one and wants two, indeed, is not
well; but if he cherishes all three, then is he holy, indeed, after
the manner of the Bible.

'This is a great thing for your great nation to boast of, before
all the nations of the earth.  From your great land a most precious
seed was brought to the land of darkness.  It was planted here, not
by means of guns and men-of-war and threatening.  It was planted by
means of the ignorant, the neglected, the despised.  Such was the
introduction of the word of the Almighty God into this group of
Nuuhiwa.  Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me all
things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come.

'How shall I repay your great kindness to me?  Thus David asked of
Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States.
This is my only payment--that which I have received of the Lord,
love--(aloha).'



CHAPTER XI--LONG-PIG--A CANNIBAL HIGH PLACE



Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothing
so surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly argue,
will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practise it.
And yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes of
the Buddhist and the vegetarian.  We consume the carcasses of
creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves;
we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-house
resounds daily with screams of pain and fear.  We distinguish,
indeed; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an
animal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows how
precariously the distinction is grounded.  The pig is the main
element of animal food among the islands; and I had many occasions,
my mind being quickened by my cannibal surroundings, to observe his
character and the manner of his death.  Many islanders live with
their pigs as we do with our dogs; both crowd around the hearth
with equal freedom; and the island pig is a fellow of activity,
enterprise, and sense.  He husks his own cocoa-nuts, and (I am
told) rolls them into the sun to burst; he is the terror of the
shepherd.  Mrs. Stevenson, senior, has seen one fleeing to the
woods with a lamb in his mouth; and I saw another come rapidly (and
erroneously) to the conclusion that the Casco was going down, and
swim through the flush water to the rail in search of an escape.
It was told us in childhood that pigs cannot swim; I have known one
to leap overboard, swim five hundred yards to shore, and return to
the house of his original owner.  I was once, at Tautira, a pig-
master on a considerable scale; at first, in my pen, the utmost
good feeling prevailed; a little sow with a belly-ache came and
appealed to us for help in the manner of a child; and there was one
shapely black boar, whom we called Catholicus, for he was a
particular present from the Catholics of the village, and who early
displayed the marks of courage and friendliness; no other animal,
whether dog or pig, was suffered to approach him at his food, and
for human beings he showed a full measure of that toadying fondness
so common in the lower animals, and possibly their chief title to
the name.  One day, on visiting my piggery, I was amazed to see
Catholicus draw back from my approach with cries of terror; and if
I was amazed at the change, I was truly embarrassed when I learnt
its reason.  One of the pigs had been that morning killed;
Catholicus had seen the murder, he had discovered he was dwelling
in the shambles, and from that time his confidence and his delight
in life were ended.  We still reserved him a long while, but he
could not endure the sight of any two-legged creature, nor could
we, under the circumstances, encounter his eye without confusion.
I have assisted besides, by the ear, at the act of butchery itself;
the victim's cries of pain I think I could have borne, but the
execution was mismanaged, and his expression of terror was
contagious:  that small heart moved to the same tune with ours.
Upon such 'dread foundations' the life of the European reposes, and
yet the European is among the less cruel of races.  The
paraphernalia of murder, the preparatory brutalities of his
existence, are all hid away; an extreme sensibility reigns upon the
surface; and ladies will faint at the recital of one tithe of what
they daily expect of their butchers.  Some will be even crying out
upon me in their hearts for the coarseness of this paragraph.  And
so with the island cannibals.  They were not cruel; apart from this
custom, they are a race of the most kindly; rightly speaking, to
cut a man's flesh after he is dead is far less hateful than to
oppress him whilst he lives; and even the victims of their appetite
were gently used in life and suddenly and painlessly despatched at
last.  In island circles of refinement it was doubtless thought bad
taste to expatiate on what was ugly in the practice.