The South Seas.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 994, 20 March 1891, Page 11

The South Seas.

[copyright.

By Robert Louis Stevenson. Auilior of * Treasure I land,’ * Kidnapped,’ * The Strange Story of Dr Joky 11 and Mr Hyd \ etc. Part I. THE MARQUESAS. Chatter viii. THE PORT Oir 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, Nuka-hiva. It was midwinter when wo came thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and [inconstant. Now the wind blew squally from the land doAvn gaps of splintered precipice ; now between the sentinel islets of the entry it came in gust 3 from the 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 Bee the sides of the amphitheatre bearded with white falls. Along the beach the town shows a thin file of houses, mostly white, and ail escooßed in the foliage of an avenue of green bruaos ; a pier gives access from the sea across the belt of heathers ; to the eastward there stands, on a projecting bushy hill, the old fort which is now the oalaboose or prison ; eastward still, alone in a garden, ths Residency flies the colours of France, Just off Calaboose Hill the tiny Government schooner ride? almost permanently at anchor, makes eight bells in the morning (there or thereabout) with the unfurling of her flag, and salutes the setting eun with the report of a musket. Here dwell together and ehare 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 Scotch 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 whioh thero 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 hia history and appearance. Long ago, it seems, he fell in love with a native lady, a high chieftess in Uapu. She, on being approached, declared Bhe 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, Seraevered until the process was complete. [e had certainly to bear a great expense, for the Tahuku will not work without reward; and certainly exquisite pain. Kooamna, high ohief as ho Avas, 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 ena-’ moured countrymen 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 frost, and the trade blows copiously over its bare floors. Of 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 mailing to the visitor like old attached family servants. On Sunday these are gone, and nothing to be seen but dogs of all rankß and sizes peacefully slum bering in the shady grounds ; for the dogs of Tai-o-hae are very courtly mioded, 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. EDgli h and Scotch sleep there, and Scandinavians, and French mailres 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 Btrains ; 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 bow 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 under shutters open to the trade. On my first visit, a dog was the only guardian visible. Ho, indeed, rose with an attitude so menacing that I was glad to lay hands on an old barrel hoop ; and I think that 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 inscription in Marqnesan 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” (eio) “pas le sou. 1 ’ From this noontide quietude, it must not be supposed the prison was untenanted ; the calaboose at Tai • a* 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. Oa the approach of evening they would be called in like children from play ; and the harbourmaster (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 shutter ; 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. Dolafnelle, carried me one day to the calaboose on an official visit. In the green court, a verv ragged gentleman, his legs deformed with the island elephan. tiasis, saluting us smiling. ohr political prisoners an insurgent from Raiafcea,” said the Resident; and then to the jailer, “I thonght I had ordered him a new pair of trousers.” Meanwhile, no oilier convict was lb be seen—“Eh bien,” said the Resident, “off sont vos prisonniers?”—“ Monsieur le Resident,” replied the jailer, saluting with soldierly formality, “ comma e’est jour ae ffite, je les ni laisse alter k la ohasse.” They were all upon the mountains hunting goats. Presently we came to the quarter of tho women, likewise deserted—“ Oil sont vos bonnes femmes?” asked the Resident, and the jailer cheerfully responded, “ Je crois, Monsieur le Resident, qu’elles sont al.'ees quslquepart faire une visile.” 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 sb 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. Thns 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 nob 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 b?gin 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 Marqueßan 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 nntil 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 ho 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 inexprea? Bible. Even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise and the counteu. ance 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 fullfledged conviot, and be allowed to sleep beside his comrades. While we were ia 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, solitnde, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he was reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil. From one cache, Avhioh 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 Frenoh should set at rest, that worse is continually hinted. I heard that one man was' kept six days with his arms bo-.ind backward round a barrel; and it is the nniversal report that every gendarme in the South Seas is equipped with something in the nature of a thumb.screw. 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 m'sconstructioh 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 may very well be innocently placed) is positively painful ; the state ot 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, tho ingenuity of the native methods of detection ; there is nob much to admire in those of the French, and to lock up a timid child in a dark room, and if he prove 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 nobedy ever works, and all eat opium,” said a gen*, darme ; and Ah Foo 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 weman, 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 Bhould they be at the bother of two walks ? Thera is no use talking,” he added—“opium is the curreucy of this country.” The man under prevention daring my stay at Tai-o-hae lest patience while the CMnefea

opium-seller was being examined in his presence. "Of comae he sold me opium ; be broke out ; “ all the Chinese here Bell 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. 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 fcy accident. It was Captain Hart who had the misfortuue to be the means of beginning it, at a time when bis Potations flourished? in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty in keeping Chinese coolies. To-day the plantations are practically do. serted and the Chinese gone; but m the meanwhile the natives have learned the rice, the patent bring, in a round sum, and the seedy Government at Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets. Of comae, the patentee is Bnppoßed 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 everyone 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. These that live In glass houses Bhould not threw stones ; a. a subject of the British crown, I am the 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 refornmed at all, with pra dence. This French business, on the other hand, is a nostrum and a-there excrescence. No native industry was to bo 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.