STORIES ABOUT TAHITI

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18445, 5 January 1922, Page 6

STORIES ABOUT TAHITI

Very few months pass nowadays without the appearance of a new book about the South Sea Islands—in story or reminiscence. The latest book in this fascinating literature of the Pacific archipelago is “Tahiti,” by the late George Calderon (Grant Richards) the writer and dramatist who was killed in Gallipoli—a man who, to quote a friend, to know was a romance. Tahiti is “an island about the size of Middlesex, fished up in the first grey beginning of all things from the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a mother-of-pearl hook by some three-fingered god of the Polynesians. . . . there is no winter there.” The Pitcairn Islanders.— The following story is in the chapter on the Pitcairn islanders;—“lt was with an awed curiosity, as if I were about to behold the grandchildren of Ulysses and Penelope, or Robinson Crusoe’s widow, that I set out to visit the descendants of the’ heroes of that wonderful epic o fthe Pacific, ‘The Mutiny of the Bounty.’ Their history is intimately bound up with Tahiti. When the mutineers had put Captain BUgh afloat in an open boat on the ocean if was to Tahiti that they returned. Half the mutineers stayed in the island and, armed as they were with guns, had a decisive influence on the internal history of the island and the rivalries of its clans. One of them became the adopted son of the chieftain of the peninsula of Tniarapu, and on his death succeeded him in the chieftaincy, whereupon a shipmate murdered him out of jealousy. A year or two later, those who stayed in Tahiti were fetched away to England to be hanged. Murdered by Their Wives.“Peter Hey wood, the young lieutenant who jvas acquitted and had an honourable career in the Navy afterwards, profited by his stay in the island to compile a Tahitian vocabulary, which is the groundwork of modem Tahitian dictionaries. The other half of the mutineers, fearing the fate that awaited them, took Tahitian wives and set sail for the uninhabitated paradise of Pitcairn’ Island, where all but two of them were soon afterwards murdered by their wives in a single night, and it was not for a generation or two that their half-caste children and' grandchildren were discovered by the crew of an English ship, who were astonished to

find a Pacific island inhabited by a race of naked, English-speaking whites. Since then, they have migrated to Norfolk Island, and back again to Pitcairn Island, and just a handful of them have drifted back to their maternal home.” Still Some Romance 1 "For the Tahitians, as a seacoast population,” says the author, “there is skill some romance about a sailor. Jovial tourists meet with bored indifference. Tils ne nous amusent pas,” said Tupuna, wearily, while they rollicked and roared about her in a drinking booth. But the ‘beachcomber,’ the short-cruise sailor, who rolls in like a wave from the ocean, eats lotus while the money lasts, and rolls out again when his pockets are empty, still has a certain prestige. “As I passed one day down the avenue at the top of the town a brute-faced British sea-dog came lurching out on the roadway from a bejasmineo, bebougainvillead bungalow. After him glided a gentle Tahitienne,- with J)hat languishing elegance of bearing that distinguishes so many of her race, begging him plaintively to put on the coat which she carried in her hand. Her eyes were like the wave within, Like water-reeds the poise Of hei soft body, dainty, thin, And like the water's noise Her plaintive voice. : “In answer to her entreaties he belched back a string of all the shockingest words in the English language, any one of which 'would have meant a month’s hard labour in New Zealand, then swaggered off, elate with the consciousness of his own superiority.” The “Nature Man.”There is a delightful account of the “Nature Man” who lived slone on a mountain at the back of Pape-ete. He was an American University man who had come to teach the natives the simple life. Calderon paid him a visit:—“l heard y. heavy thumping on my right, and looking along the slope beheld a tall, lean man, as naked as Isaiah, hacking a hole in the ground. He looked quietly up as I drew near, and leaned on his mattock. He had a handsome civilised American face, with clean-cut nose and eyes, short, tangled beard, hair falling in locks of dusty yellow on his shoulders, and the general aspect of an Ober-Aramergau Christ. His ( tanned shin threw the little fine flaxeh hairs of his body into relief. He said, T am glad to see you, brother, and led me to his house. . . '.