The South Seas.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 32, 7 February 1891, Page 3 (Supplement)

The South Seas.

[COPYRIGHT.]

By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Author of " Treasure Island," " Kidnapped,' " The Strange Story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," etc.

CHAPTER 11. MAKING FRIENDS,

The impediment of tongues was one thab I particularly over-estimated. The languages of Polynesia ara easy to smatter, though hard to speak with elegance. And they are extremely similar, so thab a person who has a tincture of one or two may risk, nob without hope, an attempt upon the others. The mosb odd and obvious variation i.s in the consonants. T and X, R and L, are interchanged in different dialects; so is the group F, H. V, or WH; and the process by which the difference arose is still to be observed in operation. The islands are subject bo epidemic tricks of speech, such as we are accustomed to in Europe. Ib is not long since all fashionable France adopted the burr, all fashionable England lisped, or all unfashionable London sounded V for W. In Europe, these epidemics come and go, so that already, in the earlier novels of Bulwer Lytton, their traces make us stare. In the islands, where all the world is "in society," and the whole population adopts at the same moment the same novelty, the consequence is more enduring. In this way, within the last half century, X has driven T oub of Hawaii, and within the last few years the Bame deformation has involved the beautiful language of Samoa. Tis now rarely sounded there except in seb orabions ; and so much confusion reigns bhab I have heard a Samoan pasbor say "Kupu "and "Atua" in bhe same clause of a prayer. The Kis no new sound in bhe Samoan language ; ib was once common. Fashion expelled and now fashion reinstates it, like exiles after an amnesty. And once more, like the exiles, it returns to find its old seat occupied by others, and to fill new positions. The place of the old X, once so carefully intruded, is still marked by the apostrophe or so-called catch ; while the new X, now so wantonly reimporbed, usurps the part of T. It should be borne in mind that this latter fashion started after the language was already written, printed, and assiduously read, and thab ib has been, and still is, steadily resisted by the mission, the central educating body. How much more swiftly must similar whims and mimicries have defaced and divided the dialects of a bookless antiquity. And, accordingly, when we look to Melanesia, we find the speech of the same island is infinitely broken up. In the small island of Tana, Mr F. A. Campbell counts no fewer than six languages ; and on New Caledonia I was assured there were not less than fifty. The latter figure struck me with incredulity. M. Gallet (who gave it mo for a round number) immediately called into tho office one of his native assistants, asked the lad what languages he could understand and which he could nob, and as each was named, showed me its territory on the map. The boy spoke three; he mentioned (I think) four of which he was quite ignorant; and they were all close neighbours in a narrow belt across the island. Mr Campbell, afber chronicling the fact quobed above, goes on to philosopbise. " It is a well-known facb," he isays, " bhab if bhere bo no fixed standard " (he refers to the art of writing), "a language will quickly alter ; and that if, under these circumstances, peoples originally speaking the same language be separabed and kepb apart, and opposed to each other in war and stratagem, their language will develop into different dialects, and become so different as to entitle them to be called different languages." I quote these words because they appear so conclusive, and because they are seemingly quite true for Melanesia. How then to explain the contrary experience of the Polynesians ? These are spread over a greab field of ocean, from north to south, and from west to east. Intercourse had long ceased between nearly all the groups. On bhe same island, in the Marquesas, every glen was in perpebual cannibal warfare wibh its neighbours. And yet to-day, from the extreme north to the extreme south, the language is probably not so different as Breton is from Welsh ; and tho Polynesian, landing on any isle within these broad bounds, will be readily understood in almosb all essentials.

And again, nob only is Polynesian easy bo emabter, bub inberprebers abound. Missionaries, braders, and broken white folk living on the bounty of the natives, are to be found in almosb every isle and hamleb; and even where these are unserviceable, the natives themselves have often Beraped up a little English, and in the French zone (though far less commonly) a little FrenchEnglish, or an efficient pidgin, whab is called to the westward " Beach-la-Mar," comes easy to the Polynesian. It is now taught, besides, in the schools of Hawaii; and from the multiplicity of British ships, and the nearness of the States on the one hand, and the colonies on the other, ib may be Called, and will almosb cerbainly become, bhe bongue of bhe Pacific. I will insbance a few examples. I meb in Majuro, a Marshall Island boy who Bpoke excellenb English. This he had learned in bhe German firm in Jaluit, yeb did nob speak one word of German. I heard from a gendarme, who had taught school in Bapa-iti, that while the children had the utmost difficulty or reluctance to learn French, they picked up English on the wayside and as if by accident. On one of the mosb out-of-the-way atrolls in tho Carolines, my friend, Mr. Benjamin Herd, was amazed to find the lads playing crick _b on the beach and talking English ; and it was in English bhab bhe crew of bhe Janeb Nicoll, a set of black boys from differenb Melanesian islands, communicabed wibh other natives throughoub tbe cruise, transmitted orders, and sometimes jested together on the fore-hatch. Bub what struck me, perhaps most of all, was a word I heard on the verandah of the Tribunal at Noumea. A case had just been heard—a trial for infanticide againsb an ape-like nabive woman, and bhe audience were smoking cigarebbes as they awaited the verdict. An anxious, amiable French lady, nob far from bears, was eager for acquittal, and declared she would engage the prisoner to be her children's nurse. The bystandera exclaimed ab the proposal. Tho woman was a savage, said bbey, and spoke no language. * Mais, vous savez,' objected the fair sentimentalist ; *ils apprennent si vite l'Anglais I' But to be able to speak to people is not all. And in the first stage of my relations I with natives, I was helped by two things. To begin with, I waa the Bhowman of the Casco. She, her fine lines, tall spars, and snowy decks, the crimson fittings of the saloon, and the white and gilt, and the repeating mirrors of the tiny cabin, brought us a hundred visitors. The men fathomed out her dimensions with their arms, as their fathers fathomed out the ships of Cook; the women declared the oabins more lovely than a church ; bounding Junos were never weary of sitting in the chairs and contemplating in the glass bheir own bland images; and I have seen one lady strip up her dre_, and, with cries of wonder and delight, rub herself, bare-breeched, upon the velvet cushions. Biscuit, jam, and syrup was the entertainment; and, as in European parlours, the photograph album went round. This sober gallery, their every-day costumes and physiognomies, had become transformed, in three weeks' sailing, into thing 3 wonderful and ricft and foreign; alien faces, barbaric dresses, bhey were now beheld and fingered, in the swerving cabin,

with innocent excitement and surprise. Her Majesty was often recognised, and 1 have seen French subjects kiss her photograph ; Captain Speedy—in an Abyssinian wardress, supposed to be the uniform of the British army—met wibh much acceptance ; and the effigies of Mr. Andrew Lang were admired in the Marquesas. There is the place for him to go when he shall be weary of Middlesex and Homer. Ib was, perhaps, yeb more important that I had enjoyed in my youth some knowledge of our Scots' folk of bhe Highlands and the islands. Not much beyond a century has paßsed since these were in the samo convulsive and transitory state as the Marquesas of to-day. In both cases, an alien authority enforced, the clans disarmed, tho chiefs deposed, new customs introduced, and chiefly that fashion of regarding money as the means and objecb of existence. The commercial age, in each, succeeding at a i bound io an age of war abroad and patriarchal communism ab home. In one the cherished practice of tattooing, in the other a cherished costume, proscribed. In each a main luxury cut oil; beef, driven under cloud of night from lowland pastures, denied to the moat-loving Highlander; long-pig, pirated from the next village, to ( tho man-eating Kanaka. Th* grumbling,' the secret ferment, the fears and resentments, the alarms and sudden councils of Marquesan chiefs, reminded me continually of the days of Lovab and Struam. Hospitality, tact, natural fine manners, and a touchy punctilio, are common to both races: common to both tongue 3 the trick of dropping medial consonants. Here is a table of two widespread Polynesian words :— House. Love.* Tahitian Faro Aroha New Zealand Whare Samoan Fale Talofa Manihiki Falo Aloha Hawaiian Hale Aloha Marquesan Ha'e Kaoha The elisian of medial consonants, so marked , in these Marquesan instances, is no less , common both in Gaelic and tbe lowland Scots. Stranger still, thab prevalenb Polynesian sound, bhe so-called catch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always . the gravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in Scotland to this day. When a Scot pronounces water Or bottle— wa'cr, ; beer, bole— the sound is precisely that of . the catch ; and I think we may go beyond and say, that if such a population could be ; isolated, and this mispronunciation should : become the rule, ib mighb prove the firsb ; stage of transition from t to k which is the disease of Polynesian languages. The , tendency of the Marquesans, however, is to 1 urge against consonants, or at least on the very common letter i, a war of mere exter- . mination. A hiatus is agreeable to any . Polynesian ear ; the ear even of the stranger : soon grows used to these barbaric voids ; but only in the Marquesan will you find i such names as Haaii and Paaaeua, when each individual vowel musb be separately : uttered.

These points of similarity between a South Sea people and some of my own folk ab home run much in my head in bhe islands ; and nob only inclined me to view my fresh acquaintances with favour, bub continually modified my judgment. A polite Englishman comes to-day to the Marquesans and is amazed to find the men tattooed; polite Italians came not long ago to England and found our fathers stained with woad ; and when 1 paid the return visit as a little boy, I was highly diverted with the backwardness of Italy: so insecure, so much a matter of the day and hour, is the preeminence of race. It was so that I hit upon a means of communication which I recommend to travellers. When I desired any detail of savage custom, or of superstitious belief, I cast back in the story of my fathers and fished for what I wanted with some traib of equal barbarism : Michael Scott, Lord Derwentwater's head, the second sight, the Water Kelpie, each of these I have found to be a killing bait; the black bull's head of Stirling procured me the legend of Rahero ; and what I know of the Cluny Macphersons, or the Appin Stewarts, enabled me to learn and helped me to understand aboub tbe Tevas of Tahiti. The native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinship grew warmer and his lips were opened. It is this sense of kinship thab the traveller must rouse and share, or he had better contenb himself with travels from the blue bed to the brown, and the presence of one cockney titterer will cause a whole party to walk in clouds of darkness. The hamleb of Anaho stands on a margin of flat land between the west of the beach and the spring of the impending mountains. A grove of palms, perpetually ruffling its green fans, carpets it (as for a briumph) wibh fallen branches, and shades it like an arbour. A road runs irom end to end of the covert among beds of flowers, the milliner's shop of the community ; and here and there, in the grateful bwilight, in the air filled with a diversity of scents, and still within hearing of tbe surf upon the reef, the native houses stand in scattered neighbourhood. The same word, as wa have seen, represents in many tongues of Polynesia, with scarce a shade of difference, tbe abode of man. But although tho word be the same, the structure itself continually varies; and the Marquesan, among the mosb backward and barbarous of islanders, was yet the mosb commodiously lodged. The grass huts of Hawaii, the birdcage houses of Tahiti, or the open shed with the crazy Venetian blinds of the polite Samoan —none of these can be compared with the Marquesan paepae-hae, or dwelling platform. Tho paepae is an oblong terrace, built wibhoub cement of black volcanic stone, from twenty to fifty feet in length, raised from four to eight feet from the earth, and accessible by a broad stair. Along the back of this, and coming to about half its width, runs the open front of the house, like a covered gallery; the interior sometimes neat and almosb eleganb in ibs bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming, some bright raiment perhaps hanging from a nail, and a lamp and one of White's sewing-machines the only marks of civilisation. On the outside, at one end of the terrace, burns bhe cookicg-fire, under a shed ; at the other there is perhaps a pen for pigs ; the remainder is the evening lounge and al-fresco banquet-hall of the inhabitants. To some houses water is brought down the mountain in bamboo pipes, perforated for the sake of sweetness. With the Highland comparison in my mind, I was struck to remember tho sluttish mounds of turf and stone in which I have sab and been enberbained in the Hebrides and the North Islands. Two things, I suppose, explain the contrast. In Scotland wood is rare, and with materials so rude as turf and stone the very hope of neabneßS is excluded. And in Scobland ib is cold. Shelber and a hearth are needs so pressing that a man looks not beyond. He is out all day after a bare bellyful, and at night when he sayeth, " Aha, ib is warm !" he has nob appebibe for more. Or if for somebhing else, then something higher. A fine school of poetry and song arose in these rough shelters, and an air like " Lochaber no more " is an evidence of refinement more convincing, as well as more imperishable, than a palace. To one such dwelling-platform a considerable troop of relatives and dependents resorb. In the hour of the dusk, when the fire blazes, and the scent of the cooked >breadfruib fills bhe air, and perhaps the lamp glints already between tho pillars of the house, you shall behold them silently assemble to this meal—men, women, and children; and the dogs and pigs frisk together up the terrace stairway, switching rival tails. The strangers from the ship were soon equally welcome: welcome to dip their fingers in the wooden dish, to drink cocoanuts, to share the circulating pipe, and to hear and hold high debate about the misdeeds of the French, the Panama Canal, or the geographical position of San Fran-

* Where that word is used as a salutation I give that form.

Cisco and Now Yb'ko. In a highland hamlet quite oub of bhe reach of any tourist I have mob the same plain and dignified hospitality. I have mentioned two facts—tho distasteful behaviour of our earliesb visitors, and the case of the lady who rubbed herself upon the cushions—which would give a very false opinion of Marquesan manners. The greab majority of Polynesians are excellently mannered ; but the Marquesan stands apart, annoying and attractive, wild, shy, and refined. "If you make him a present he affects to forget it, and ib must be offered him again ab his going: a pretty formality I have found nowhere else. A binb will get rid of any one or any number, they are so fiercely proud and modest; while many of the more lovable, but blunter islanders, crowd upon a stranger, and can be no more driven oil i than flies. A slight or an insulb tbe Marquesan seoms never to forget. I was one day talking by the wayside with my friend Hoka, when I perceived his eyes suddenly to flash and his stature to swell. A white horseman was coming down the mountain, and as he passed, and while he paused to exchange salutations with myself, Hoka was still staringandrufilinglikea gamecock. It was a Corsican who had years befora called him cochin sauvar/e — cocon chauwige, as Hoka mispronounced it. With people aa nice and so touchy, ib was scarce to be supposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder into offences. Hoka, on one of bis visits, fell suddenly in a brooding silence, and presently after lefb the ship with cold formality. When he took me back into favour he adroitly and pointedly explained the nature of my offence. I had a3ked him to sell cocoanuts, and in Hoka's view, articles of food were things that a> gentleman should give, not sell —or ab leasb bhab he should nob sell to any friend. Oa another occasion I gave my boat's crew a luncheon ot chocolate and biscuits. I had sinned, I never could learn how, againsb some poinb of observance, and though I was drily thanked, my offerings were lefb upon the beach. But our worst mistake was a slight we pub on Toma, Hokaa adoptive father, and in his own eyes the rightful chief of Anaho. In the firsb place, we did not call upon him, as perhaps we should, in his fine new European house, the only one in the hamlet. In the second, when we came ashore upon a visit to his rival, Taipi-kikino, it was Toma whom we saw standing ab bhe head of bhe beach, £4 magnificenb figure of a man, magnificently tattooed, and it was of Toma that we asked our question : ' Where is the chief ?' ' Whab chief ?' cried Toma, and turned his back on the blasphemers, Nor did he forgive us. Hoka came and went with us daily, bub alone I believe of .all the countryside, neither Toma nor his wife seb foob on board the Casco. The temptation resisted ib is' hard for a European bo oompube, Tha 'Flying Ciby of Lapuba, 5 moored for a forbnighb in Sb. James's Park, affords bub a pale figure of bhe Casco anchored befora Anaho, for the Londoner has still his change of pleasures, bub the Marquesan passes to his grave through an unbroken uniformity of days.

On the afternoon before it was intended we should sail, a valedictory party came on board — nine of our particular friends equipped with gifts, and dressed as for a festival. Hoka, the chief dancer and singer, the greatest dandy of Anaho, and one of the handsomest yoUng fellows in the world —sullen, showy, dramatic, light as, a feather, and strong as an ox—ib would have been hard, on bhab occasion, to recognise, as he sab bhere sbooped and silenb, his face heavy and grey. Ib was sbrange bo see bhe lad so much affected, stranger still to recognise in his last gift one of bhe curios we had refused on the firsb day, and to know our friend, so gaily dressed, so plainly moved ab our departure, for one of the halfnaked crew that had besieged and insulted us on our arrival—strangest of all, perhaps, to find in thab carved handle of a fan the last of those curiosities of the first day which had now all been given to us by their possessors — their chief merchandise, for which they had sought to ransom us as long as we were strangers, which they pressed on us for nothing as soon as we were friends* The lasb visib was nob long protracted. One after another they shook hands and gob down inbo bheir canoe; when Hoka burned his back immediabely upon the. ship, so that we saw hi 3 face no more. Taipi, on the other hand, remained standing, and facing us with gracious valedictory gestures; and when Captain Otia dipped the ensign, the whole party saluted with their hats. This was the farewell; the episode of our visit to Anaho was held concluded ; and though the Casco remained nearly forty hours at her moorings, not one returned on board, and I am inclined to think they avoided appearing on the beach. This reserve and dignity is the finest trait of bhe Marquesan.

('To be Continued.)