THE SOUTH SEAS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 995, 27 March 1891, Page 11

THE SOUTH SEAS.

[copyright.]

By Robert Louts Stevenson. Author of * Treasure Island,’ ‘Kidnapped,* ‘ The Strange Story of Dr Jekyll and Air Hyde,’ etc.

sr Part 1. THE MARQUESAS. Chapter ix. THE HOUSE OP TKMOAKA. The history of the Marquesas ia 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 meantime 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 oame to my ears : how he wa» at first a convert of 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 iofiuence of the late bishop, extended his influence in the group, was for awhile 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 almanack 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 Pablio 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 find, 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 Micunesia, the rale 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 ia more industriously shampooed, is probably the true one. In New Caledonia, at ieast. where the difference does not exist or has never been remarked, the practice of sham* pooing seems to be itself unknown. Doctors would be well employed in a Btudy of the point. Vaekehu lives at the other end of the town from the Residency, beyond the build* ings of the mission. Her house is on the European plan : a table in the midst of the chief room ; photographs and religious pic* tures on the wall. It commands to either hand a charming vista : through the front door, a peep of green lawn, scurrying pigs, the pendant fans of the cocoanut and the splendour of the bursting surf : through the back, mountain forest glades and coronals of precipice. Here, in the strong thorough* draft, her Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of loyalty 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 Vae* kehu above all others) delight to Bing 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 1 a shade of quietism gathered perhaps from the nans, was what chiefly struck, us. Or rather, upon that first occasion, we were conscious of a sense as cf district visiting on our part, and reduced evangelical gentility on the part of our hostess. The other impression followed after she was mare at ease, and came with Stanislao and his little girl to dfue on board the Casco. She had dressed for the occasion: wore white, which very well became her. strong brown face; and sat among ns, eating or smoking her cigarette, quite out off from all society, or only now and then included through the intermediary of her son. It was a position that might have ridioulous, 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, 'wben'ahe came to leave, was gracious and pretty, a 9 had been every step of her behaviour. When Mrs Stevensou held out her hand to say good-bye, Yaekehu took it, held it, and a moment smiled upon her ; dropped it, and then, as upon a kindly afterthought, and with a sort of warmth of condecension, held out both hands and kissed my wife npoa both cheeke. Given the same relation of years and of rank, the thing would have been sr> done on the boards of the Comedie Franeaise ; just so might Madame Brohan have warmed and conde.scended to Madame Briosat in the Marquis de Villemer. It wasmypart to aooompanyour guests ashore : when I kissed tho little girl good-bye at the pier steps, Vaekohu 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 awhile 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 bo 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 bloodstained 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 bouses. Only Vaekehu’s mitteDS were of dye, not of silk j 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 aßked Stanislao "Ah !” said he, “ she is content ; she is religious, Bhe passes all her days with the Bisters.”

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 i 3 fluent, his talk sensible and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in ohief, he is of excellent service to the French. W ith 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 randon 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 drumbeat 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 heat 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. — “Chaqne pays a ses coutumes,” said he; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to increase the number of delicts and the instruments of his own power, custom after custom is placed on the expurgatorial index. “ Tenez, une danse qui n’est point permise,” said Stanislao : “ je ne sais pas pourquoi, elle est ties jolie, elle va comma ga,” 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 oE the Resident, he thought the chief defect of the administration ; that officer having scarce began to be efficient ere he was recalled. I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with some fear the coming chaDge from a naval to a civil governor. I am snre 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 flret 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 oommnnicate. The story of Gordon I told him in full, and many episodes of the Indian Mutiny, Luoknow, the second battle of Oawnpore, the relief of Arrah, the death of poor Spottiswoode, and Sir Hugh Rose’s Hotspur,Midland campaign, was intent to bear ; 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 farewqU to Stanislao. He had already loaded us with gifts ; but more were waiting. We sat about the table over cigars and greeu cocoanuts ; claps of wind blew through tbe house and extinguished the lamp, which wa9 always instantly relighted with a single match ; and these recurrent intervals of darkness were felt as a relief. For there wia something painful and embarrassing in tbe the kindness of that separation. “ Ah, voua devriez rester ici, mon cher ami oried Stanislao. “ Vous efces les gens qu’il faut pour les Kanaqnes ; vous fetes doux, vous et votre famille ; vous serioz obeis dans toutes les iles.” We had been civil; not always that, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond ; and all this to dois a measure, not of our considerateness, but of the waut of it in others. Tbe 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 umberlla ; and aftertbeboathad putoff, wecouldstill distingnish, in the murky darknens, his gestures of farewell. His words, if there were any, were drowned by tho 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 tho world like dog 3 after a waggon of cat’s meat; and where the frequent proposition, “You my pleni (friend),” or (with more pathos) “ You all the same my father,” must be reoeived with healthy 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 till he hss made it. The first i 3 disappointed if you have not given more than he ; the second is miserable if he thinks that he has given less than you. This is my experience ; if it clash with that ot others, I pity their fortune, and praise mine: the circumstance 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 groat hate and contemner of Kanakas. “ Well 1 what were they J” he cried. “ A pack of old men’s beards. Trash !” And the same gentleman, some half an hour later, being upon a different train cf thought, dwelt at length on tho esteem in which the Marquesons held that sort of property, how they it to all others excspfc land, and what it would fetch. Using bis own figure's; T"computed that, in'this commodity alone; the gifts of Vaekeha and Stanislao represented between two and three hundted 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 hU gifts. A plain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly but without the least enthusiasm. And we Bhall 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 Polynesians ; their gifts are formal ; they imply no more than social recognition ; and they are made and reciprooated, as we pay and return our morniDg 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.