It is bright morning when we make Aitutaki, and the sea is so vividly blue, as we push off in the boat, that I wonder my fingers do not come out sapphire-coloured when I dip them in. And I think, as the eight brown arms pull us vigorously shoreward, that no one in the temperate climes knows, or ever can know, what these sea-colours of the tropics are like, because the North has no words that express them. How, indeed, should it have?
We are rowing, as fast as we can go, towards a great white ruffle of foam ruled like a line across the blue, blue sea. Inside this line there lies, to all appearance, an immense raised plain of green jade or aquamarine, with a palmy, plumy island, cinctured by a pearly beach, far away in the middle. Other islands, smaller and farther away, stand out upon the surface of this strange green circle here and there, all enclosed within the magic ring of tumbling foam, more than five miles across, that sets them apart from the wide blue sea. It is only a lagoon of atoll formation, but it looks like a piece of enamelled jewel-work, done by the hand of some ocean giant, so great that the huge sea-serpent itself should be only a bracelet for his arm. The raised appearance of the lagoon is one of the strangest things I have yet seen, though it is merely an optical delusion, created by contrast in colour.
We are fortunate, too, in seeing what every one does not see—a distinct green shade in the few white clouds that overhang the surface of the lagoon. Here in Aitutaki a great part of the sky is sometimes coloured green by the reflections from the water, and it is a sight worth witnessing.
Through an opening in the reef we enter—the boatmen pulling hard against the outward rush of the tide, which runs here like a cataract at times—and glide easily across the mile or so of shallow water that lies between us and the shore. One or two splendid whale-boats pass us, manned by native crews, and the other passengers tell me that these boats are all made by the Aitutakians themselves, who are excellent builders.
There is a very decent little wharf to land on, and of course, the usual excited, decorated crowd to receive us, and follow us about. I am getting quite used now to going round at the head of a continual procession, to being hung over with chains of flowers and berries, and ceaselessly fed with bananas and cocoanuts, so the crowd does not interfere with my enjoyment of the new island. We are going to stop a day or two here, and there will be time to see everything.
When you sleep as a rule in a bunk possessing every attribute of a coffin (except the restfulness which one is led to expect in a bed of that nature), you do not require much pressing to accept an invitation to “dine and sleep” on shore. Tau Ariki (which means Chieftainess, or Countess, or Duchess, Tau) lives in Aitutaki, and she had met me in Raratonga, so she sent me a hearty invitation to spend the night at her house, and I accepted it.
Tau is not by any means as great a personage as Makea, or even as great as Tinomana, the lesser queen. She is an Ariki all the same, however, and owns a good deal of land in Aitutaki. Also, she is gloriously married to a white ex-schooner mate, who can teach even the Aitutakians something about boat-building, and she is travelled and finished, having been a trip to Auckland—the ambition of every Cook Islander. So Tau Ariki is a person of importance in her own small circle, and was allowed by the natives of the town to have the undoubted first right to entertain the white woman.
Tau’s house, in the middle of the rambling, jungly, green street of the little town, proved to be a wooden bungalow with a verandah and a tin roof, very ugly, but very fine to native eyes. There were tables and chairs in the “parlour”; and the inevitable boiled fowl that takes the place of the fatted calf, in Pacific cookery, was served up on a china plate. A rich woman, Tau, and one who knew how the “tangata papa” (white folk) should be entertained!
She gave me a bedroom all to myself, with a smile that showed complete understanding of the foolish fads of the “wahiné papa.” It had a large “imported” glass window, giving on the main street of the town, and offering, through its lack of blinds, such a fine, free show for the interested populace, that I was obliged to go to bed in the dark. There was a real bed in the room, covered with a patchwork quilt of a unique and striking design, representing a very realistic scarlet devil some four feet long. It seemed to me the kind of quilt that would need a good conscience and a blameless record, on the part of the sleeper reposing under it. To wake in the middle of the night unexpectedly, with the moonlight streaming in, forget for the moment where you were, and, looking round to find a landmark, drop your startled eyes upon that scarlet fiend, sprawling all over your chest—— Well, I had a good conscience, or none—I do not know which—so I felt the red devil would not disturb my slumbers, and he did not.
There was nothing else in the room, except a new, gold-laced, steamship officer’s cap, whereto there seemed neither history nor owner, reposing on the pillow. If there was any mystery about the cap, I never knew it.
I put it out on the windowsill, and a hen laid an egg in it next morning, and no doubt the hen lived happily ever after, and I hope the officer did, and that is all. It seems pathetic, but I do not know why.
There was nothing to wash in, but Tau knew her manners, and was quite aware that I might have a prejudice against sitting in a washing-tub on either the front or the back verandah, to have buckets emptied on my head in the morning. So she made haste to leave a kerosene tin full of water, before going to her camphorwood chest, and extracting a pink silk dress trimmed with yellow lace, for me to sleep in.
“I’m afraid that won’t do; it’s too—too good to sleep in,” I remarked.
“Nothing too good for you, you too much good self!” was the amiable reply.
“But I could not sleep in it, Tau. There’s—there’s too much of it,” I objected, not knowing how to word my refusal without impoliteness.
“All right,” commented my hostess, throwing a glance at the purple gloom of the torrid hot-season night outside. “He plenty hot. I get you pareo, all same mine.” And she disinterred a brief cotton kilt of red and yellow, considerably smaller than a Highlander’s.
“That’s too little,” objected the exacting guest, rather to poor Tau’s perplexity. How was one to please such a visitor? At last, however, after refusing a figured muslin robe that was as transparent as a dancing-robe of classic Ionia (there are other analogies between those robes, if one might go into the subject; but I fear the British public must not be told about them), and a pink shirt belonging to the white husband, a neat cotton day gown was discovered, offered, and accepted, and peace reigned once more in the exceedingly public guest-chamber of Tau Ariki’s house.
Concerning quilts, by the way, one may here add a short note. Patchwork is the delight of the Cook Island women, and has been so, ever since that absorbing pastime was first introduced to them by the missionaries’ wives. They are extremely clever at it, and often invent their own patterns. Sometimes, however, they copy any startling device that they may chance to see—the more original, the better. A really good patchwork quilt is considered a possession of great value, and (one is sorry to say) often preferred to the fine, beautifully hand-woven mats in which the islanders used to excel. They still make mats in large numbers, but the patchwork quilt has spoilt their taste for the finer mats, and these latter are getting scarce.
In the morning, shark-catching was the order of the day. Aitutaki is celebrated for this sport all over Australasia, and I was very glad to get a chance of joining in it. One does not catch sharks, in Aitutaki, after the usual island fashion, which is much like the way familiar to all sea-faring folk—hook and line, and a lump of bad pork, and tow the monster to the shore when you have got him. No, there is something more exciting in store for the visitor-who goes a-fishing in Aitutaki lagoon. The water is very shallow for the most part, and heats up quickly with the sun, especially when the day is dead calm, and there is not a ripple to break the force of the rays. By noon, the lagoon is unbearably warm in all the shallow parts, and the sharks which inhabit it in large numbers, begin to feel uncomfortable. Some of them make for the opening in the reef, and get out into the cooler sea beyond. Others, one will suppose, are lazy, and do not want to be troubled to swim so far. So they head for the coral patches here and there, and lie on the sand in the shelter of the rocks, their bodies thrust as far into the clefts and crannies of the coral as they can manage to get. This is the Aitutakian’s opportunity. He is perfectly fearless in the water, and he knows that the shark is, after all, a stupid brute. So he arms himself with a knife, takes a strong rope, noosed in a slip-knot at one end, in his hand, and dives from his whale-boat into the warm green water, where he has marked the latter end of a shark sticking out from a patch of coral, some three or four fathoms underneath the surface.
The shark, being head in, does not see anything, but by-and-by he becomes aware of a delicate tickling all along his massive ribs, and as he rather likes this, he stays-quite still, and enjoys it. It is the Aitutakian, tickling him as boys tickle a trout in a stream at home, and for exactly the same reason. He has got the noose in his left hand, and his aim is to slip it over the shark’s tail, while he distracts the brute’s attention by pleasantly tickling with the other hand. Perhaps he manages this at the first attempt—perhaps he is obliged to rise to the surface, and take a breath of air, going down again to have a second try. But, in any case, he is pretty sure to get the noose on before the shark suspects anything. Once that is accomplished, he rises to the surface like a shooting air-bubble, swings himself into the boat, and gives the order to “haul in!”
The men in the boat lay hold of the rope, tighten with a sharp jerk, and tail on. Now the shark begins to realise that something has happened; and realises it still more fully in another minute or two, when he finds himself fighting for his life on the gunwale of a rocking boat, against half a dozen islanders armed with knives and axes. The battle is short the great brute is soon disabled by a smashing blow on the tail, and in another hour or two the village is feeding fat on his meat, and his fins are drying in the sun, to be sold to the trader by-and-by, for export to China. No dinner-party in China is complete without a dish of daintily dressed shark’s fins, and a good proportion of the supply comes from the Pacific.
This is shark-fishing, as practised in Aitutaki. But I was not destined to see it at its best, for the day turned out breezy, and there was such a ripple, upon the water that the natives declared the sharks would be extremely difficult to see or capture. Nevertheless, the captain and I decided to go, as there was a chance, though a faint one. We hired a boat, and took with us, as well as the rowers, Oki, a diver of renown. If Oki could not raise a shark for us, it was certain that no one could.
The captain of the missionary steamer John Williams had told me about the fishing some weeks before, and added that he had seen a shark caught himself, and tried to photograph it, but the photo was not a success, because, as he put it, “the shark moved!”
This story wandered about in my mind as we shot across the lagoon to the fishing grounds, and the boat began to look uncomfortably small. “What does the shark do when you get it in the boat?” I inquired rather anxiously.
“Makes the devil of a row, and the devil of a mess,” said our own captain cheerfully. “But don’t you mind him. Let sharks alone, and they’ll let you alone; that’s always been my experience.”
Conscious that I was never unkind to animals, not even tigers or sharks, I tried to feel at ease. But I did not quite succeed, until we got to the coral beds, and Oki put everything else out of my head by going head first overboard, and starting out among the rocks below (it was calmer here, and we could see him pretty plainly) to look for a shark.
His thin brown body showed up shadowy and wavering, upon the sands at the bottom, as he glided like a fish all along the patch of reef, inspecting every cave or crack where a shark might hide. He did not seem to be incommoded in the least by the three or four fathoms of water above him, but moved about as quietly and easily as if he had been swimming on the surface. I felt sure he must be at the point of death, as the seconds flew by, and he still glided in and out of the rocks with nothing but the gleam of his white pareo to show his whereabouts, whenever he slipped into the shadow of one of the many clefts in which a shark might lie hidden. But Oki knew very well what he was about, and he did not seem at all exhausted when he shot to the surface again, after rather more than two minutes’ absence, and told us gloomily that “No shark stop!”
We tried again, and again. Oki took the slip knot down with him every time and every time he brought it up in his hand, unused. Melancholy, deep and silent, settled upon the boat. But at last the luck changed; our diver came up, and announced with a smile, that there was a shark down there, very far into the coral, and if he could only reach the animal’s tail, it would be all right.
One of the boatmen at this went to help him, and together they swam down to the bottom, and began fumbling interminably in the shadow. It was clear that they were making every effort to tempt the shark out, for one could see Oki straining wildly with his arm in the cleft, “tickling” industriously, while the other hovered head downwards outside, trailing the noose like a loop of seaweed in his hand. But all proved vain. Exhausted, the men rose at last, and gave it up. The shark was too far in, they said, and the noose could not be got on. If we remembered, they had told us it was not a good day, and they hoped we thought enough had been done. As for themselves, they were very tired doing our pleasure, and their lungs were sore, but they thought some plug tobacco—the black, sticky kind, and a good deal of it—would set them all right again.
This was outside the letter of the agreement, which had included a good price for the boat and nothing else; but we promised some tobacco, when the stores should be reached, and asked for some more particulars about the fishing.
“Do you ever find the shark head out, instead of tail out?” I queried.
“Yes, sometime he come head out,” said Oki, reversing a green cocoanut on his nose, and swallowing in great gulps.
I waited till he had finished before I asked: “What happens then?”
“Shark he fight, and we fight too,” said Oki simply.
“And which wins?”
“All the time the Aitutaki boy he win, but sometime the shark he win too,” was the cryptic reply.
Shark fins, I was told, sell for about six shillings a pound. Some of the traders in the islands further north, where sharks are abundant, make a good deal of money taking the fish on a hook and line, and drying the fins for sale. It should be a fairly profitable industry, as the fins of a medium shark appear to weigh a good deal—not less than three or four pounds, at a guess.
It was on my second visit to Aitutaki that I went out to the lesser islands of the lagoon; but the tale of that expedition may well come here.
These islets are of various sizes, from a mere rock with a couple of palms on it, to a fertile piece of land over a mile long, richly grown and wooded. They all lie within the great lagoon, and are therefore sheltered by a natural breakwater of the reef from the violence of the storms that occur in the rainy season. The nearest is about three miles from the mainland. All are quite uninhabited, and no particular value is set on them by anybody. They belong to the various chief families of the big island, but any one who wished to rent one in perpetuity (the New Zealand Government laws, which rule here, do not permit outright sale) could probably secure it for a few pounds a year.
I was anxious to see them, for it seemed to me that islands suited to the realisation of Robinson Crusoe dreams could hardly be found the wide Pacific over. A desolate isle five hundred miles from anywhere, sounds well in a story, but the romance of such a spot is apt to wear very thin indeed after a few months, if one may believe the experiences of those who have tried it. Practical details are seldom considered by would-be Crusoes; they have, however, a knack of thrusting themselves into the foreground just when retreat is impossible. If you elect to live on a remote island, how are you going to keep up communication with the outer world? You will want at least a few commodities of civilisation from time to time, and they cannot swim across half the great South Seas, from Auckland or ’Frisco, up to your front verandah unaided. You will want mails, newspapers, and letters, unless haply you are a criminal flying from the near neighbourhood of the black cap and the drop—and how are these to come? Trading schooners will not call at your island unless you have plenty of cargo for them, and even then, you may not see them twice a year. Steamers, of course, you must not expect. If you keep a small vessel of your own, you must be thoroughly sea-trained to run and navigate her, and you will need to bring a few island men to your kingdom as crew, and they will want to go home again, and make trouble, and finally run off with your ship some dark night, and maroon you there for good. No, the “desert” island idea is best left to the shelves of the school library.
But at Aitutaki, and in some similar collections of atoll islands Robinson Crusoe’s way is made easy and pleasant—or so it seemed to me, crossing the lagoon that afternoon on my way to the islets that were lying waste and uninhabited out on its broad expanse. From three to five miles away from the mainland, these islets are sufficiently isolated for any one who has not quarrelled with the whole human race. There is a steamer once a month, at the little pier near the settlement. There are one or two stores on the main island, where common provisions, cotton stuffs, spades, and knives, and such simple things, can be purchased. The lagoon is usually so calm that a native canoe would serve all ordinary needs of communication, for any one living on an islet. A house could be built in a few days, of the native type: and a good concrete bungalow could be put up with native help, in a very few weeks. Why should any one want to live in such a spot? Well, it is not necessary to argue out that question, because I have found by experience that quite a remarkable number of people do. It was for those people that I crossed the lagoon that day, and I know I shall have their thanks.
A whale-boat and a crew were necessary for the trip. I engaged both in the village, and went down to the wharf followed by a “tail” of seven stalwart islanders, dressed in white and crimson pareos, berry necklaces, and a curiously representative collection of steamship caps and jerseys. The Aitutakian is an inveterate traveller, and all these men had been away in a steamer somewhere as deck hands—or else their friends had, and they had begged a steamer cap and jersey or two here and there: it was all the same to them. The P. & O.—the Union S.S. Co. of New Zealand—the Shaw, Savill, and Albion—the Orient—Burns Philp—were all represented (so far as caps and jerseys went) by my boat’s crew, and very well pleased with themselves and their poached attire they evidently were.
Provisions had to be purchased, they declared, as we should not be back before afternoon. So into the big store the whole party went to see me victual the ship. I bought biscuits and meat, exactly half what they asked, and they were so uplifted with joy at the amount of the supplies that they sang all the way down to the boat; and, once in it, treated me to an exhibition of rowing, the like of which I never expect to see again. The Aitutaki man is the smartest boatman, and the best hand with an oar, in the Southern Pacific. Never a man-of-war comes round the Cook group that her men do not try conclusions with the Aitutakians, and if report speaks truth, the result is not always flattering to British pride. Nor is this astonishing, to any one who has seen these islanders row. We had six miles of a pull, and every inch was against a strong head wind, and through a decidedly choppy sea. Yet, in spite of these handicaps, the men rowed the whole way at racing pace, oars springing, spray flying, the great whale-boat tearing through the water as though a mortal enemy were in pursuit. The coxswain, in the stern, kept slyly urging the rowers on to let the foreign woman see what they could do, and they pulled “all out”—or what looked extremely like it—from start to finish. I do not think any white crew that ever held an oar could have lived with that splendid six-mile rush. And when we neared the first island and gradually slacked speed, there was not one among those seven mighty chests that heaved faster than at the start. Truly, I thought, they had earned their picnic.
But the islets! If Raratonga was the realisation of a childish dream, this was the embodiment of a vision of fairyland. There can surely be nothing on earth more lovely than the islet constellation enclosed by Aitutaki reef. The water, shallow, sun-jewelled, and spread out over a bed of spotless coral sand, is coloured with a brilliance that is simply incredible. Emerald and jade and sapphire—yes, one expects these, in the hues of tropic seas. But when it comes to whole tracts of glancing heliotrope and hyacinth, shot with unnamable shades of melted turquoise and silver, and all a-quiver with pulsations of flashing greens, for which there is no name in any language under the pallid northern or burning southern sun—then, the thing becomes indescribable, and one can only say:
“There is something in that little corner of earth beyond the touch of words, so you will never know anything about it, unless you too go there, and see it for yourself. And when you have seen, you will come away burning to describe, as I was—but you will not be able.”
In the midst of this magical sea, rise the islets themselves—fairyland every one. Their little beaches are sparkling white, as only a coral beach can be; palm-trees, heavyheaded with their loads of huge green nuts, cluster thick along the shores; coral-trees drop their blood-red flowers into the glass-like water of the lagoon; ripe oranges swing their glowing lamps among the darker green of the woods that rise behind. Big white clams with goffered shells, each holding meat enough for one man’s dinner, gleam along the edges of the shore; large, long-legged crabs wander rustling and rattling among the stones. The murmur of the barrier reef is very far away; its thin white line of foam gleams out a long way off, under a low horizon, sky shot strangely with lilac blue—a lonely, lovely, exquisite place, the like of which one might seek the world all over, and never find again.
We landed on the sand, and I set about exploring, while the men knocked down cocoanuts, and squatted in the shade to drink them, and suck fresh oranges. The island on which we had landed was one of the smaller ones, not more than an acre or two in extent. It rose to a high point in the centre, and was so thickly wooded all over, that I could hardly make my way through. There was no sign of life or habitation, and the ripe fruit was everywhere rotting on the ground.
I pictured the little islet with a high brown roof peeping out among its palms, a neatly kept pathway cut through the bush, and a snug boathouse on the shore, covering a fine whaleboat, while a graceful native canoe lay on the sand, ready for any one to lift down into the water at any minute. I wonder, will the picture ever body itself out in real, for some tired-out soul, weary of cities and competition, or some pair of lovers, who find the world well lost in each other, here among the far islands of the sweet Southern Seas? I shall never know, for the “sea-bird’s feather” was in the pillow on which I slept my first baby sleep, and I wander always on. But it may be that these words will be read by some to whom they are, or shall be, a part of fife’s own history.
We did not get to the other islands that day, partly because I wasted so much time looking for shells, and partly because the largest were still some miles away, and the wind was stronger than ever. One, I heard, had ground enough for a paying plantation, and was already fairly well supplied with cocoanuts. All are perfectly healthy and free from fevers of any kind, and though mosquitoes are present in rather large numbers, careful clearing of their breeding grounds would in time drive them away.
In case author, or publishers, should be inundated with inquiries about South Sea Islands, it may be as well to say that all over the Pacific, the Governors, Commissioners, and Resident Agents of the various groups are always ready to furnish information to honest inquirers.
CHAPTER VIII
Jumping a Coral Reef—The Great Wall of the Makatea—Makaia’s Wonderful Staircases—A Clothing Club of the Pacific—Cool Costumes in Atiu—The Lands that lie waste—Mystery of a Vanished Tribe—Fashions in Hair-Dressing—The Sign-Language of the Sex—Invited to a Feast.
MANGAIA, where we next stopped, proved quite an exciting place. You cannot land upon Mangaia in the ordinary way: the reef that surrounds it is unbroken, and girdles the whole island in a fortress moat of its own. The only way to land is to get into one of the numberless native canoes that crowd about the ship, and let the copper-coloured owner take you over the reef in his own way, which is the determined and decisive way of a steeplechaser at a fence. It is most excellent fun and a new thing in sensations. As the little dug-out—made of nothing more elaborate than a hollowed mango log, with an outrigger at one side—rushes shoreward on the crest of a foaming roller, you watch with rather anxious interest the movements of the dusky boatman, who poises his paddle in the air, waits, looks, and strikes the water, always at exactly the right moment—usually when you are just beginning to think of kicking off your shoes.
There is the reef right in front, a pearly shadow in the blue, with up-springing spears of ivory, bared like the teeth of a tiger, when the wave rolls back. Are we going to jump that? We are indeed. The boatman lifts his paddle—we sweep upwards on the sloping blue satin neck of a curling wave. No no, that will not do—not this time. He backs water—we hang on the crest of the wave—but we are not going to be drowned, or snapped up by the sharks that haunt the reefs, because the boatman is a born islander, and what he does not know about canoeing over a reef, neither you nor I need attempt to teach him. Another wave, a monster this time, swinging us up into the air as if we were a couple of grasshoppers out paddling in a walnut shell. That will do: here she goes! The wave roars with us; the wicked white fangs gleam on either hand: our rough thick keel scrapes agonisingly on the coral, and there is a smother of foam and tumbling blue and bursting green all about the cranky little craft. Bump! we have struck—we strike again, but it does not seem to matter in the least: over we go, and we are in the smooth, safe, shallow green water inside, and across the reef. And here are a dozen men of Mangaia, splashing’ about in the lagoon, ready to pick up the visitor in their powerful arms as soon as the canoe grounds in the shallow* water, and carry her ashore.
That is how one lands on Mangaia.
This island is of a good size, being some thirty mile» in circumference. Its formation is very notable, being indeed rather celebrated among geologists. It is supposed to be of volcanic origin, like most of the “high” islands. From the sea, it looks much like any other place of the same size. But, going inland, one is astonished to find that a mere strip of land close round the coast terminates the ground available for walking on. A high irregular cliff wall, from fifty to a hundred feet in height, encloses the whole interior of the island, which thus resembles in shape a very large cup set on a very small saucer. Within the cup lie all fertile lands, the taro beds, the yam fields, the pineapple patches, the tangled bush, where cotton used to be grown in the days of the American war, the low green shrubberies that produce the finest coffee in the Cook Islands. To reach them, there is only one way—that furnished by a really wonderful rocky staircase, built in prehistoric times by the ancestors of the present natives. If one were to find such a work in any other of the Cook Islands one might regard it as proof positive of the existence of an older and more industrious race, in the days before the New Zealand Maori took possession of these lands, and grew effeminate and idle in the occupying.
But the people of Mangaia, though identical in descent with incurably indolent and sensual Aitutakians and Raratongans, have been moulded by their environment to a degree that amounts to an actual difference in character. The barrier reef has always prevented the free communication enjoyed by other islands, so that they were able to develop along their own lines of character, without modification from outside. With an island that possessed only a limited amount of fertile land, a matchless fortress in the interior, and a complete barrier about the exterior, it was a foregone conclusion that the Mangaians should become inhospitable, reserved, and hard-working, as compared with the prodigally generous and idle folk of the open and fertile islands. They did so. In the days before the missions, some sixty years ago, the Mangaians were the fiercest cannibals in the group, and determinedly hostile to strangers: nor were they ever as pleasure-loving as the other Cook Islanders. To-day they are harder in character than the folk of the other islands; kindly to strangers, but hardly gushing in their reception of them, and so much more industrious than the Aitutakians or Raratongans that Mangaian men are sought as servants all over the group.
There is, therefore, no difficulty in understanding how the people of Mangaia found energy and time to construct the staircases that span the great wall of “Makatea,” enclosing the inner part of the island. Being obliged day after day to climb with infinite pains the sharp rocky heights of the cliff, in order to get from the fishing grounds to the plantations, they would certainly not be long in devising some means of lessening this inconvenience. The staircases which are the result must have taken many years and much labour in constructing, and it is difficult to understand how a people unacquainted with the use of any mechanical contrivance could have placed so many large blocks of stone in the positions which they occupy. The steps are very high and irregular, and on an extremely torrid afternoon it is not exactly the walk one would choose for pure enjoyment. However, our time in Mangaia was short, so I explained to a native girl that I wanted to see the Makatea, and she at once called up half the village to join the procession.
Attended, therefore, by my young guide and the inevitable following, I went up the mighty stairs, and across the tract of level land lying at the top. It is nearly a mile before one comes upon the cup-like valley in the centre of the island, so it must be allowed that the rim of the cup is a thick one. After a pleasant walk through groves of cocoanut and guava, we came upon the inner side of the wall, and stood on the edge of a great grey circular cliff, spiked, spired, and towered with extraordinary eccentricity, and splendidly garlanded with falling masses of sea-green creeper. At one point, a huge split in the rock had evidently provided a foundation for the second staircase, which was rougher than the first, made of great blocks of stone irregularly laid here and there so as to fill up the split in part, and give a foothold to the climber. Still, it was a big piece of work, and must have taken a good many years—generations, perhaps—to complete. Down in the valley below, which seemed to be two or three miles across, were all the native plantations and gardens, and as we jumped down from block to block, we met hard-faced muscular women toiling upwards with heavy loads of vegetables and fruit. In the taro fields, terraced so as to let a little stream trickle through and create an artificial swamp, the workers seemed to be women only. They dug and scraped in the thick mud under the burning sun, leaving off their tasks long enough to stare and question a little, and then setting stolidly to work again. The men were probably out fishing or pigeon shooting. In spite of Christianity, the island woman always carries the heavy end of the load, where there is one to carry; the man is the hunter, the woman the labourer and beast of burden, as in the cannibal times of long ago.
There are some remarkable caves in the island, and I went into them for a mile or so, in company with the local missionary, who kindly offered to act as guide.
Caves, however—as most people will allow—are much alike in all parts of the earth, and there is nothing to differentiate the long, dark, dripping passages, half-glimpsed halls, gloomy crevasses, and dimly sparkling stalactite candelabra of a South Sea Island cave, from those of a cave near Brighton or the Land’s End. There is no need, therefore, to describe the caves of Mangaia further than to say that they were quite up to the usual pattern, and that at all events, they gave a touch of “Swiss Family Robinson” to the island atmosphere that was pleasing to the imagination.
It had, of course, nothing to do with Mangaia, but I wondered as we walked back from the caves towards the top of Makatea, how it was that the interesting shipwrecked people who live in caves as described in fiction, never seem to be troubled with damp? I have, personally, never seen a cave—out of a book—that was not first cousin to a showerbath, and I should be surprised if any One else had. Who ever saw a genuine cave roof that was not covered with stalactites, large or small? and what makes stalactites but endless drip? If I were a shipwrecked person, I should certainly prefer the temporary house the “useful” character always puts up in half an hour with the aid of four growing trees and the ship’s mainsail, to the cave that is invariably discovered in the second chapter. I should know for certain that the former was the driest—even when it rained.
I cannot leave the subject of the strange Makatea, without telling yet a little more about it, for it has not often been described or mentioned. Geologists say that it is the product of a double volcanic upheaval. The first convulsion threw up the island itself, and, in the course of ages, the usual encircling reef of coral was built up round it by the busy coral insects, working under the water. Then came a second upheaval, and the island and reef together were cast up two hundred feet. The Makatea is thus the ancient reef that once surrounded the original small island which is represented by a crown of heights in the middle of the cup of the crater, and by the sunk-down valley about it. The narrow strip of land that edges the beach to-day is a later formation.
One cannot mistake the character of the great coral cliff, which is quite unlike any kind of stone, or indeed anything but itself. The passing ages have turned it to rock, but to rock which is hollowed in every direction with caves, small and great, and filled with fossil shells as a pudding is filled with plums. No unprotected foot can tread the surface of these heights, which are simply a mass of serried grey spears, sharp and cruel as the top of a wall protected by broken glass. The natives, if convenience leads them to cross any part of the Makatea other than the staircases, usually protect their feet with thick sandals of woven coir fastened on with cords. One can imagine how much this peculiar protection must have added to the safety of the interior of the island, in the old predatory days.
The caves were often used for burying places in time gone by, and it is only a few years since a “find” of skulls of a type differing in several particulars from those of the present day, was made in one of the largest caves by a schooner captain. Rumour says that he sold them for a good price, but the purchasers were not known.
Another use of the coral caves in the old days (over fifty years ago) was a shelter for fugitives of various kinds. The Mangaians were not a pleasant people, in those times, either to strangers or each other. The outsider was cooked and eaten for the mere offence of presuming to exist. The Mangaian was never sure that some one who had a spite against him would not murder him—probably by poison, in the use of which these people were as expert as the Borgias themselves. Under these circumstances, the caves were never without their occupants, living in secret, and creeping out at night to pick up a little food. Many and romantic are the stories told by the missionaries and traders of these stirring times, if I had space to relate them.
Mangaia is a beautiful island, but that goes without saying, in the exquisite Cook Group. It has about half a dozen white people, and the native population is said to number something under two thousand.
Though a pleasant island and a healthy one, it cannot be recommended to planters, as there is not an inch of land available for rent. The natives themselves are keen traders and bargainers, and export much of their fruit and copra direct to Auckland. Most of what they make is spent in trade-finery, for which they have an uncontrollable passion. On Sundays, the churches are a very flower-garden of frippery, the men turning out in the most brilliant of shirts, ties, and suits, the women decking themselves in long loose robes of muslin, sateen, or cheap silk, coloured in the most screaming hues—pea-green, royal blue, scarlet, and orange being all strong favourites. Their hats, made by themselves out of silky arrowroot fibre, are often trimmed with the costliest ribbons and artificial flowers, and even with ostrich plumes to the value of two or three pounds. It is somewhat puzzling, I was told, to see several entire families got up in the same extraordinary style, unless you know the reason, which is, that these various households have joined together in a club, putting all the money they have made into one purse, and sending it down to Auckland on their own account for a bale of gorgeous clothing, all alike. Thus you will see twenty or thirty women, on a Sunday morning, dressed alike in robes of vermilion satinette, and wearing huge hats, crowned by three ostrich feathers, red, yellow, and blue, arranged after the fashion of the Prince of Wales’s crest.
This is one of the clubs, and there are sure to be others that vie with them in startling attire. Such are the weaknesses—after all, venial ones indeed—of the sturdy-souled Mangaian.
Atiu was our next stop, and here the reef-jumping process had to be repeated in another form. The ship’s whale-boat, steered by our captain, who was the cleverest hand at the big sixteen-foot steer-oar of any white man I have ever seen, approached the edge of the reef, and danced about in front of it, until the passengers found an opportunity of leaping out on to it. Then, rather wetfooted (but no one minded that, in a temperature like the hot room of a Turkish bath) we were picked up by natives waiting on the shallow side, and carried through the lagoon, which was not more than a foot or two deep.
On landing, we found a number of the men standing on the shore ready to receive the Commissioner. They had been fishing, and were clad simply and coolly in a rag and a feather apiece—the latter worn in the hair, over one ear. Their dress, however, did not seem to embarrass them at all, and they came forward and shook hands with every one,’ quite politely. All the Cook islanders are supposed to be Christianised and civilised, but in some parts of the group the civilisation, at all events, seems to be wearing very thin, and this is notably the case in Atiu, an island rather larger than Raratonga, which has no resident missionary, save a very conceited and upsetting young native teacher. The Atiuans were of old a wilder and fiercer race than even the Mangaians, and such determined cannibals that they used to make raids on the surrounding islands for the simple purpose of filling their cooking ovens, and enjoying a mighty feast. Great war canoes, laden with gory corpses, have many a time been’ drawn up on the very stretch of sand where we landed, and the grandfathers of the men who greeted us have sung and danced in fierce exultation to see the fat limbs and well-fed bodies of their enemies laid in ghastly heaps upon the snowy beach, ready for the cooking pits that since early morning had been glowing with flame in anticipation of the banquet.
“Meek-faced Atiuans” was the nickname bestowed upon these islanders, in derision, by those who knew their wiliness and treachery. There is not much that is meekfaced about them to-day. They certainly look rougher and less amiable than any others of the Cook Islanders, and they are by no means so amiable and easy-going as the Raratongans, Aitutakians, and people of Mitiaro and Mauke. However, it cannot be said that they are in any way dangerous, and the stray white people who have lived in the island (there was only one at the time of my visit) have always got on well with them. Rough, as I said before, they certainly are. A ring I wore on my hand attracted the attention of one or two of the men, and they crowded round, fingered it, and actually tried to snatch—an attempt very shortly put an end to by the Commissioner, who ordered them off peremptorily. The incident, although small, illustrates a standard of manners that one would certainly not encounter in any other part of the group, or indeed in any one of the Southern or Eastern Pacific groups that I afterwards saw.
There was a good deal of native-manufactured lime-juice to be got away here, and the people (most of them more completely dressed than the party that had received us on the shore) were busy rolling down the casks into the water, where the out-going tide took them, and floated them across the reef to the schooner. It seemed a strange way of taking on cargo, but I learned, afterwards, that it is not uncommon in islands surrounded by a dangerous reef.