THE SOUTH SEAS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 9274, 21 April 1891, Page 4

THE SOUTH SEAS.

[copyright.]

By Robert Lours Stevkxsox.

Author of * Treasure Island,’ ‘ Kidnapped, ‘The Strange Story of Dr JekyU and -Mr Hyde,’ etc.

Part I. THE MARQUESAS

CHAPTER X. A CANNIBAL HIGH PLACE.

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothing bo surely umnortars a society ; nothing we might plausibly argue will so harden and degrade the minds of (hoso that practise it. And yet we our selves make much, the samo appearance in the eyes of the Buddhist and the vegetarian. We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with our. selves; we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughterhouse resounds daily with screams of pain and fear. Wo distinguish, indeed ; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an animal with whom we live an terms of the nest 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 oar 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 oocoanuts, and (I am told) rolls them into tho sun to burst ; he is tho terror of the shepherd. Mrs Stevenson, senior, has seen one fleeing to the woods with a lamb in his mouth ; and I saw another oome rapidly (and erroneously) to the conclusion that the Casco was going down, and swam 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 ono to leap overboard, swim five hundred yarda 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 foeling prevailed ; a little sow with a bellyache came and appealed tr us for help in the manner of a child ; and there was one shapely black boar, whom we called Catholiens, for ho was a particular present from the Catholics of the village, and who early displayed tho marks of courage and friendliness ; no other animal, whether dog or pig, was suffered to approach him at his food, and for human bsings ho 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 n.y approach with cries of terror, and If I was amazed at the change I was truly embarrassed when X learnt its reason. One of the pigs had been that morning killed; Catholicus bad seen the murder, he had discovered he was dwelling in the shambles, and from that time bis confidence and his delight in life were ended. We still ressrved him a long while, but he could not endure tho sight of any two-legged creature, nor could wo, 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 oouhi have borne, but the execution was mismanaged, and his expression of teiror was contagious : that small heart moved to the same tune with ours. Upon such “dreadful foundations ” tho 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 ail hid away ; an extreme sensibility reigns upon the surface ; and ladies will faint at tho 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 tho 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 need in life and suddenly and painlessly despatched at last. In inland circles of refinement, it was doubtless thought bad taste to expatiate on what was ugly in the practice. Cannibalism is traced from end to end of the Pacific, from tho Marquesas to New Guinea, from New Zealand to Hawaii, here in the lively haunt of its exercise, there by scanty bnt significant survivals. How shall we account for the universality of the practice over so vast an area, among people of such varying civilisation, and, with whatever intermixture, of such different blood ? What circumstance is common to them all, but that they liiedon islands destitute, or very nearly so, of animal food ? I oan never find it in my appetite that man was meant to live on vegetables only. When our stores ran low among the islands, I grew to weary for the recurrent day when economy allowed us to open another tin of miserable mutton. And in at least one ocean language, a particular word denotes that a man is “ hungry for fish,” having reached that stage when vegetables oan no longer satisfy, and his soul, like those of the Hebrews in the desert, begins to lust after flesh-pots. Add to this the evidences of over.population and imminent famine already adduced, and I think we see some ground of indulgence for the island cannibal.

it is right to look at both sides of any question ; but I am far from making the apology of this worse than bestal vice. The higher Polynesian races, such as the Tahitians, Hawaiian?, and Samoans, bad one and all outgrown, and some of them had in part forgot, the practice, before Cook or Bougainvilla bad shown a topsail in their waters. It lingered only in some low islands whore life was difficult to maintain, and among inveterate savages like the New Zealanders or the Marqueeans. The Marquesas intertwined man-eating with the whole future of their lives ; long pig was in a sense their currency and sacrament; it formed the hire of the artist, illustrated public events, and was the occasion and attraction of a feast. To-day they are paying the penalty of this bloody commixture. The civil power, in Its .crusade against man-eating, has had to examine one after another all Marquesan arts and pleasures, has found them one after another tainted with a cannibal clement, and one after another has placed them on the prescript list. Their art of tattooing stood by itself, the execution exquisite, the designs most beautiful and intricate; nothing more handsomely sets off a handsome man ; it may cent some pain in the beginning, but 1 doubt if it be near so pain* ful in the long run, and I am sure it is far more than the ignoble European practice of tight lacing among women. And now it has bden found needful to forbid the art. Their songs and dances were numer* ous (and the law has had to abolish them by the dozen). They now face emptyhanded the tedium of their uneventful days; and who shall pity them ? The least rigorous will say that they were justly served. Death alone could not satisfy Marquesan vengeance—the flesh must be eaten. The chief who seized Mr Whalon preferred to eat him; and be thought he bad justified the wish when he explained it was a vengeance. Two or three years ago, the people of a val* ley seized and slew a wretch who had offended them. His offence, it is supposed, was dire ; they could not bear to leave their vengeance incomplete, and under the eyes of the French they did not dare to hold a public festival. The body was accordingly divided ; and every man retired to hia own house to. consummate the rite in secret, carrying his proportion of the dreadful meat in a Swedish match-box. The barbarous substance of the dr ma and the European properties employed offer a striking contrast to the imagination. Yet more striking is mother incident of the veiy year when I was there myself, ISS3. Xn the spring, a man and woman skulked about the schoolhouse in Hiva-oa till they found a particular child alone. Him they approached with honeyed words and carneying manners—- “ You ore So-and-so, son of Soand-so?” they asked ; and caressed and beguiled him deeper in the woods. Some instinct woke in the child’s bosom, or some look betrayed the horrid purpose of hia deceivers. He sought to break from them ; be screamed ; and they casting off the mask, seized him the more strongly and began to run. Hia cries were heard ; hia schoolmates playing not far off, came Tuning to the rescue ; and the sinister couple fled and vanished in the woods. They we»e never identified; no prosecution followed ; but it was currently supposed they had some grudge against the boy’s father, and designed to eat him in revenge. All over the islands, as at home among our own ancestors, it will be observed that the avenger takes no particular heed tc strike an individual. A family, a class, a village, a whole valley or island, a whole race of man* kind, share equally the guilt of any mem* her. So, in the above story, the son was to pay the penalty for hia father; so Mr Whalon, the mate of an American whaler, was to bleed and be eaten for the misdeeds of a Peruvian slaver. lam reminded of an incident in Jalult, in the Marshall Group, which was told mo by an eye witness, and which I tell here again for the strangeness of ths scene. Two men awakened the am* mosity of the Jaluit chiefs ; and it was their wives who were selected to be punished. A angle native served as executioner. Early in the morning, in face of a large concourse of spectators, he waded out npou the reef between his victims. These neither complained nor resisted; accompanied their destroyer patiently; stooped down, when they bad waded deep enough, at his command ; and ho (laying one hand upon the shoulders of each) held them under water till they drowned. Doubtless, although my informant did not tell mo so, their families would he lamenting aloud upon the beach. It was from Hatihcu that I paid my first visit to a cannibal high place. The day was sultry and clouded. Drenching tropical showers succeeded bursts of sweltering sunshine. The green pathway of the road wound steeply upward. As w© went, our little schoolboy guide a little ahead of us. Father Simeon had his portfolio in his hahcl, and named the trees for me, and read aloud from his notes the abstract of their virtues. Presently, the road mounting, showed as' tbs vale of Hatibou on a larger scale; and the priest, with occasional reference to our guide, pointed oat

the boundaries and told ma the tamos of the larger tribes that lived at perpetual war in the old days; one on the north-east, one along the beach, one behind upon the mountain. With a survivor of this latter clan, Father Simeon had spoken; until the pacification he had never been to the eea’e edg«», nor, if I remember exactly, eaten of sea fish. Each in its own district, the septa lived cantoned and boleagured. One step without the boundaries was to affront death. If famine came, the men must out to the woods to gather chestnuts and small fruits ; even as to this day, if tho parents are backward in their weekly doles, school must bo broken up and the scholars sent foraging, Butin the old days, when there was trouble in one clau, there would be activiag in all its neighbours ; tho woods would be laid full of ambushes ; ami ho who went after vegetables for himself, might remain to be a joint for his hereditary foes. Nor was the pointed occasion needful. A dozen different natural signs and social junctures called this people to the warpath and the cannibal huut. Let one of chiefly rank have finished his tattooing, the wife of one be near upon her time, two of the debouching streams have deviated nearer on tho beach of Hatibeu, a certain bird have been heard to sing, a certain ominous formation of cloud observed above the northern sea ; and instantly tho arms were oiled, and the man-hunters swarmed into the bush to lay their fratricidal ambuscades. It appears besides that occasionally, perhaps in famine, the priest would shut himself in his house, where he lay for a stated period like a person dead. When he came forth it was to

run for three days through the territory of the clan, naked and starving, ond to sleep at night alone in the high place. It was now the turn of the others to keep tho house, for to encounter the priest upon his rounds was death. On the eve of the fourth day the time of the running was over ; the priest returned to his roof, the laymen came forth, and in the morning the number of tho victims was announced. I have this tale of the priest on one authority—l think a good one—but I set it down with diffidence. The particulars are so striking that, bad they been true, I almost think 1 must have heard them oftener referred to. Upon ouo point there seems to be no question : that tho feast was sometimes furnished from within the clan. In times of scarcity, all who wero not protected by Iheir family connections — in the highland expression, fill iho commons of the clan—had cause to tremble. It was vain to resist, it was useless to lice. They were begirt upon all hands by cannibals ; and the oven was ready to smoke for them abroad in the country of their foes, or at homo in the valley of their fathers. At a certain corner of the road, our eoholar-guido struck off to his left into the twilight of the forest. We wero now on one of the native ancient roads, plunged in a high vault of wood, and clambering, it aeemod at random over boulders and dead trees; but tho lai wound in and out and up and down without a check, foi those paths are to the natives as marked as the king’s highway is to us, insomuch that, in tho days of the man hunt, it was their labour rather to block and deface than to improve them. In tho crypt of tho wood tho air was clammy and hot and cold ; overhead, upon tho leaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured, but only here and there, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single crop would fall, and make a spot upon my mackintosh. Presently the huge trunk of a banyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed tho ruins of an ancient fort; and our guide, halting and holding forth his arm, announced that we bad reached the paepae tapu. Paepao signifies a floor or platform such as a native house is built on ; and even such a paepae—a paepae hae—may be called a paepae tapu in a lesser sense when it is deserted and becomes the haunt of spirits ; but the public high place, snob as I was now treading, was a thing on a groat scale. As far as my eyes could pierce through the dark undergrowth, the floor of the forest was all paved. Three tiers of terrace ran on the slope of tho hill; in front, a crumbling parapet contained the main arena ; and tho pavement of that was pierced and parcelled out with several wells and small enclosures. No trace remained of any superstructure, and the scheme of the amphitheatre was difficult to seize. I visited another, in Uiva oa, smaller, but more perfect, where it was easy to follow rows of benches, and to distinguish isolated seats of honour for eminent persons, and where, on tho upper platform, a single joist of the temple or dead house still remained, its uprights richly carved. In the old days, tho high place was sedulously tended. No tree except tho sacred banjan was suffered to encroach upon its grades, no dead leaf to rot upon tho pavement. The stones were smoothly set, and I am told they were kept bright with oil. Oa all sides the guardians lay encamped in their subsidiary hats to watch and cleanse it. No other foot of man was suffered to draw near; only the priest, in the days of hia running, came there to sleep—perhaps to dream of hia ungodly errand ; but, la the time of tbo feast, the clan trooped to tho high place in A body, and each had hia appointed seat. There were places for the chiefs, the - drummers, tho dancers, tho women, and the priests. Tile drums—perhaps twenty strong, and some of them twelve feet high—continuously throbbed in time. In time the singers kept up their long* drawn, lugubrious, ululating, song j in time, too, the dancers, tricked out in singular finery, stopped, leaped, swayed, and gesticulated —their plumed fingers fluttering in the air like butterflies. The sense of time, in all these ocean races is extremely perfect; and I conceive, in such a festival, that almost every sound and movement fell in on*. So much tho more unanimously must have grown tho agitation of tho feaaters ; so much tho more wild must have been the scene to any European who could have beheld them there, in the strong sun and the strong shadow of the banyan, rubbed with saffron to throw in a more high relief the arabesque of ths tattoo ; the women bleached by days of confinement to a complexion almost European ; the chiefs crowned with silver plumes of old min’s beards and girt with kittles of tho hair of dead women. All manner of island food was meanwhile spread for the women and the commons; and, for those who wero privileged to eat of it, there were carried up to the dead house the baskets of long pig. It is told that the feast) were long kept up ; the people oame from them brntishly exhausted with debauchery, and the chiefs heavy with their beastly food. There ore certain sentiments which we call emphatically human—denying the honour of that name to those who lack them. In such where the victims had been slain at home, and men banqueted on the poor clay of a comrade with whom they had played in infancy, or a woman whose favours they had shared—tho whole body of these sentiments ia outraged. T> consider it too closely ia to understand, if not to excuse, those fervours of self-righteous old ship captoins, who would man their guns, and open fire in passing,on a earnibal island. And yot it waa strange. There, upon the spot, as X stood under the high dripping vault of the forest, with the young priest on the one hand, in his kilted gown, and the bright eyed Marquosan schoolboy on the other, tho whole business appeared infinitely distant; and, fallen in tho cold perspective and dry light of history, tho bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. He smiled ; he jested with the boy, tho heir both of these feastora and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation ; and I beheld the place with no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hive oa, as X began to appreciate that the thing was still living and latent about my footsteps, and that it was stiff within the bounds of possibility that I might hear the cry of the trapped victim, my historic attitude entirely failed, and I was sensible of some repugnance for the natives. But here, too, the priests maintained their jocular attitude ; rallying the cannibals as upon an eccentricity rather absurd than horrible ; seeking, I should say, to shame them from the practice by good natured ridicule, as we shame a cbi'd from stea iog sugar. We may here recognise the temperate and sagacious mind of Bishop Dordillou.