The Island of Upolu, in the Samoan group, averages less than fifteen miles in width, and it is a delightful experience to cross from Apia, or any other town on the north, to the south side. The view to be obtained from the summit of the range that traverses the island from east to west is incomparably beautiful—I have never seen anything to equal it anywhere in the Pacific Isles.
A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa, I brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work on the big plantation at Mulifanua. I also brought with me something I would gladly have left behind—the effects of a very severe attack of malarial fever.
A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days' leave, intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu, where I had many native friends, and try and work some of the fever poison out of my system.
Starting long before sunrise, I was well past Vailima Mountain—the destined future home of Stevenson—by six o'clock. After resting for an hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono—soon to be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging—I began the long, gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range, inhaling deeply of the cool morning air, and listening to the melodious croo! croo! of the great blue pigeons, and the plaintive cry of the ringdoves, so well termed manu-tagi (the weeping bird) by the imaginative Samoans.
Walking but slowly, for I was not strong enough for rapid exercise, I reached the summit of the first spur, and again spelled, resting upon a thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket containing some cooked food, and fifty cartridges for my gun. “Sui,” as he was called for brevity, was an old acquaintance of mine and one of the most unmitigated young imps that ever ate taro as handsome “as a picture,” and a most notorious scandalmonger and spy. He was only thirteen years of age, and was of rebel blood, and, child as he was, he knew that his head stood very insecurely upon his shoulders, and that it would be promptly removed therefrom if any of King Malietoa's troops could catch him spying in flagrante delicto. Two years before, he had attached himself to me, and had made a voyage with me to the Caroline Islands, during which he had acquired an enormous vocabulary of sailors' bad language. This gave him great local kudos.
Sui was to accompany me to the top of the range, and then return, as otherwise he would be in hostile territory.
By four o'clock in the afternoon we had gained a clear spot on the crest of the range, from where we had a most glorious view of the south coast imaginable. Three thousand feet below us were the russet-hued thatched roofs of the houses of Siumu Village; beyond, the pale green water that lay between the barrier reef and the mainland, then the long curving line of the reef itself with its seething surf, and, beyond that again, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific, sparkling brightly in the westering sun.
Leaning my gun against one of the many buttresses of a mighty masa'oi tree, I was drinking in the beauty of the scene, when we heard the shrill, cackling scream of a mountain cock, evidently quite near. Giving the boy my gun, I told him to go and shoot it; then sitting down on the carpet of leaves, I awaited his return with the bird, half-resolved to spend the night where I was, for I was very tired and began to feel the premonitory chills of an attack of ague.
In ten minutes the sound of a gun-shot reverberated through the forest aisles, and presently I heard Sui returning. He was running, and holding by its neck one of the biggest mountain cocks I ever saw. As he ran, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, and when he reached me and threw down gun and bird, I saw that he was trembling from head to foot.
“What is the matter?” I asked; “hast seen an aitu vao (evil spirit of the forest)?”
“Aye, truly,” he said shudderingly, “I have seen a devil indeed, and the marrow in my bones has gone—I have seen Te-bari, the Tâfito."{*}
I sprang to my feet and seized him by the wrist.
“Where was he?” I asked.
“Quite near me. I had just shot the wild moa vao (mountain cock) and had picked it up when I heard a voice say in Samoan—but thickly as foreigners speak: 'It was a brave shot, boy'. Then I looked up and saw Te-bari. He was standing against the bole of a masa'oi tree, leaning on his rifle. Round his earless head was bound a strip of ie mumu (red Turkey twill), and as I stood and trembled he laughed, and his great white teeth gleamed, and my heart died within me, and——”
I do not want to disgust my readers, but truth compels me to say that the boy there and then became violently sick; then he began to sob with terror, stopping every now and then to glance around at the now darkening forest aisles of grey-barked, ghostly and moss-covered trees.
“Sui,” I said, “go back to your home. I have no fear of Te-bari.”
In two seconds the boy, who had faced rifle fire time and time again, fled homewards. Te-bari the outlaw was too much for him.
Personally I had no reason to fear meeting the man. In the first place I was an Englishman, and Te-bari was known to profess a liking for Englishmen, though he would eagerly cut the throat of a German or a Samoan if he could get his brawny hands upon it; in the second place, although I had never seen the man, I was sure that he would have heard of me from some of his fellow islanders on the plantations, for during my three years' “recruiting” in the Kingsmill and Gilbert Groups, I have brought many hundreds of them to Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti.
Something of his story was known to me. He was a native of the great square-shaped atoll of Maiana, and went to sea in a whaler when he was quite a lad, and soon rose to be boat-steerer. One day a Portuguese harpooner struck him in the face and drew blood—a deadly insult to a Line Islander. Te-bari plunged his knife into the man's heart. He was ironed, and put in the sail-locker; during the night three of the Portuguese sprang in upon him and cut off his ears. A few days later when the ship was at anchor at the Bonin Islands, Te-bari freed himself of his handcuffs and swam on shore. Early on the following morning one of the boats was getting fresh water. She was in charge of the fourth mate—a Portuguese black. Suddenly a nude figure leapt among the men, and clove the officer's head in twain with a tomahawk.
One day Te-bari reappeared among his people at Maiana and took service with a white trader, who always spoke of him as a quiet, hardworking young man, but with a dangerous temper when roused by a fancied wrong. In due time Te-bari took a wife—took her in a very literal sense, by killing her husband and escaping with her to the neighbouring island of Taputeauea (Drummond's Island). She was a pretty, graceful creature of sixteen years of age. Then one day there came along the German labour brig Adolphe seeking “blackbirds” for Samoa, and Te-bari and his pretty wife with fifty other “Tâfitos” were landed at one of the plantations in Upolu.
Young Madame Te-bari was not as good as she ought to have been, and one day the watchful husband saw one of the German overseers give her a thick necklace of fine red beads. Te-bari tore them from her neck, and threw them into the German's face. For this he received a flogging and was mercilessly kicked into insensibility as well. When he recovered he was transferred to another plantation—minus the naughty Nireeungo, who became “Mrs.” Peter Clausen. A month passed, and it was rumoured “on the beach” that “No-Ears,” as Te-bari was called, had escaped and taken to the bush with a brand-new Snider carbine, and as many cartridges as he could carry, and Mr. Peter Clausen was advised to look out for himself. He snorted contemptuously.
Two young Samoan “bucks” were sent out to capture Te-bari, and bring him back, dead or alive, and receive therefor one hundred bright new Chile dollars. They never returned, and when their bodies were found in a deep mountain gully, it was known that the earless one was the richer by a sixteen-shot Winchester with fifty cartridges, and a Swiss Vetterli rifle, together with some twist tobacco, and the two long nifa oti or “death knives,” with which these valorous, but misguided young men intended to remove the earless head of the “Tâfito pig” from his brawny, muscular shoulders.
Te-bari made his way, encumbered as he was with his armoury, along the crest of the mountain range, till he was within striking distance of his enemy, Clausen, and the alleged Frau Clausen—née Nireeungo. He hid on the outskirts of the plantation, and soon got in touch with some of his former comrades. They gave him food, and much useful information.
One night, during heavy rain, when every one was asleep on the plantation, Te-bari entered the overseer's house by the window. A lamp was burning, and by its light he saw his faithless spouse sleeping alone. Clausen—lucky Clausen—had been sent into Apia an hour before to get some medicine for one of the manager's children. Te-bari was keenly disappointed. He would only have half of his revenge. He crept up to the sleeper, and made one swift blow with the heavy nifa oti Then he became very busy for a few minutes, and a few hours later was back in the mountains, smoking Clausen's tobacco, and drinking some of Clausen's corn schnapps.
When Clausen rode up to his house at three o'clock in the morning, he found the lamp was burning brightly. Nireeungo was lying on the bed, covered over with a quilt of navy blue. He called to her, but she made no answer, and Clausen called her a sleepy little pig. Then he turned to the side table to take a drink of schnapps—on the edge of it was Nireeungo's head with its two long plaits of jet-black hair hanging down, and dripping an ensanguined stream upon the matted floor.
Clausen cleared out of Samoa the very next day. Te-bari had got upon his nerves.
The forest was dark by the time I had lit a fire between two of the wide buttresses of the great tree, and I was shaking from head to foot with ague. The attack, however, only lasted an hour, and then came the usual delicious after-glow of warmth as the blood began to course riotously through one's veins and give that temporary and fictitious strength accompanied by hunger, that is one of the features of malarial fever.
Sitting up, I began to pluck the mountain cock, intending to grill the chest part as soon as the fire was fit. Then I heard a footstep on the leaves, and looking up I saw Te-bari standing before me.
“Ti-â ka po” (good evening), I said quietly, in his own language, “will you eat with me?”
He came over to me, still grasping his rifle, and peered into my face. Then he put out his hand, and sat down quietly in front of me. Except for a girdle of dracaena leaves around his waist he was naked, but he seemed well-nourished, and, in fact, fat.
“Will you smoke?” I said presently, passing him a plug of tobacco and my sheath knife, for I saw that a wooden pipe was stuck in his girdle of leaves. He accepted it eagerly.
“Do you know me, white man?” he asked abruptly, speaking in the Line Islands tongue.
I nodded. “You are Te-bari of Maiana. The boy was frightened of you and ran away.”
He showed his gleaming white teeth in a semi-mirthful, semi-tigerish grin. “Yes, he was afraid. I would have shot him; but I did not because he was with you. What is your name, white man?”
I told him.
“Ah, I have heard of you. You were with Kapitan Ebba (Captain Ever) in the Leota?”
He filled his pipe, lit it, and then extended his hand to me for the halt-plucked bird, and said he would finish it. Then he looked at me inquiringly.
“You have the shaking sickness of the western islands. It is not good for you to lie here on the leaves. Come with me. I shall give you good food to eat, and coco-nut toddy to drink.”
I asked him where he got his toddy from, as there were no coco-nut trees growing so high up in the mountains. He laughed.
“I have a sweetheart in Siumu. She brings it to me. You shall see her to-night. Come.”
Stooping down, he lifted me up on his right shoulder as if I were a child, and then, with his own rifle and my gun and bag and the mountain cock tucked under his left arm, he set off at a rapid pace towards one of the higher spurs of the range. Nearly an hour later I found myself in a cave, overlooking the sea. On the floor were a number of fine Samoan mats and a well-carved aluga (bamboo pillow).
I stretched myself out upon the mats, again shivering with ague, and Te-bari covered me over with a thick tappa cloth. Then he lit a fire just outside the cave, and came back to me.
“You are hungry,” he said, as he expanded his big mouth and grinned pleasantly. Then from the roof of the cave he took down a basket containing cold baked pigeons, fish and yams.
I ate greedily and soon after fell asleep. When I awoke it seemed to be daylight—in reality it was only a little past midnight, but a full bright moon was shining into the cave. Seated near me were my host and a young woman—the “sweetheart”. I recognised her at once as Sa Laea, the widow of a man killed in the fighting a few months previously. She was about five and twenty years of age, very handsome, and quiet in her demeanour. As far as I knew she had an excellent reputation, and I was astonished at her consorting with an outlawed murderer. She came over and shook hands, asked if I felt better, and should she “lomi-lomi” (massage) me. I thanked her and gladly accepted her offer.
An hour before dawn she bade me good-bye, urging me to remain, and rest with her earless lover for a day or two, instead of coming on to Siumu, where there was an outbreak of measles.
“When I come to-morrow night,” she said, “I will bring a piece of kava root and make kava for you.”
The news about the measles decided me. I resolved to at least spend another day and night with my host. He was pleased.
Soon after breakfast he showed me around. His retreat was practically impregnable. One man with a supply of breech-loading ammunition could beat off a hundred foes. On the roof of the cave was a hole large enough to let a man pass through, and from the top itself there was a most glorious view. A mile away on the starboard hand, and showing through the forest green, was a curving streak of bright red—it was the road, or rather track, that led to Siumu. We filled our pipes, sat down and talked.
How long had he lived there? I asked. Five months. He had found the cave one day when in chase of a wild sow and her litter. Afraid of being shot by the Siumu people? No, he was on good terms with them. Very often he would shoot a wild pig and carry it to a certain spot on the road, and leave it for the villagers. But he could not go into the village itself. It was too risky—some one might be tempted to get those hundred Chile dollars from the Germans. Food? There was plenty. Hundreds of wild pigs in the mountains, and thousands of pigeons. The pigs he shot with his Snider, the pigeons he snared, for he had no shot gun, and would very much like to have one. Twice every week Sa Laea brought him food. Tobacco too, sometimes, when she could buy it or beg it from the trader at Siumu. Sometimes he would cross over to the northern watershed and catch a basketful of the big speckled trout which teem in the mountain pools. Some of these he would send by Sa Laea to the chief of Siumu, who would send him in return a piece of kava, and some young drinking coconuts as a token of good-will. Once when he went to fish he found a young Samoan and two girls about to net a pool. The man fired at him with his pigeon gun and the pellets struck him in the chest. Then he (Te-bari) shot the man through the chest with his Winchester. No, he did not harm the girls—he let them run away.
Sa Laea was a very good girl. Whenever he trapped a manu-mea (the rare Didunculus, or tooth-billed pigeon) she would take it to Apia and sell it for five dollars—sometimes ten. He was saving this money. When he had forty dollars he and Sa Laea were going to leave Samoa and go to Maiana. Kapitan Cameron had promised Sa Laea to take them there when they had forty dollars. Perhaps when his schooner next came to Siumu they would have enough money, etc.
During the day I shot a number of pigeons, and when Sa Laea appeared soon after sunset we had them cooked and ready. We made a delicious meal, but before eating the lady offered up the usual evening prayer in Samoan, and Te-bari the Earless sat with closed eyes like a saint, and gave forth a sonorous A-mene! when his ladylove ceased.
I left my outlaw friend next morning. Sa Laea came with me, for I had promised to buy him a pigeon gun (costing ten dollars), a bag of shot, powder and caps. I fulfilled my promise and the woman bade me farewell with protestations of gratitude.
A few months later Te-bari and Sa Laea left the island in Captain Cameron's schooner, the Manahiki. I trust they “lived happily ever afterwards”.
Nine years had come and gone since I had last seen Nukutavake and its amiable brown-skinned people, and now as I again stepped on shore and scanned the faces of those assembled on the beach to meet me, I missed many that I had loved in the old, bright days when I was trading in the Paumotus. For Death, in the hideous shape of small-pox, had been busy, taking the young and strong and passing by the old and feeble.
It was a Sunday, and the little isle was quiet—as quiet as the ocean of shining silver on which our schooner lay becalmed, eight miles beyond the foaming surf of the barrier reef.
Teveiva, the old native pastor, was the first one to greet me, and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke to me in his native Tahitian, bade me welcome, and asked me had I come to sojourn with “we of Nukutavake, for a little while”.
“Would that it were so, old friend. But I have only come on shore for a few hours, whilst the ship is becalmed—to greet old friends dear to my heart, and never forgotten since the days I lived among ye, nigh upon a half-score years ago. But, alas, it grieves me that many are gone.”
A low sob came from the people, as they pressed around their friend of bygone years, some clasping my hands and some pressing their faces to mine And so, hand in hand, and followed by the people, the old teacher and I walked slowly along the shady path of drooping palms, and came to and entered the quiet mission house, through the open windows of which came the sigh of the surf, and the faint call of sea-birds.
Some women, low-voiced and gentle, brought food, and young drinking nuts upon platters of leaf, and silently placed them before the White Man, who touched the food with his hand and drank a little of a coco-nut, and then turned to Teveiva and said:—
“O friend, I cannot eat because of the sorrow that hath come upon thee. Tell me how it befel.”
Speaking slowly, and with many tears, the old teacher told of how a ship from Tahiti had brought the dread disease to the island, and how in a little less than two months one in every three of the three hundred and ten people had died, and of the long drought that followed upon the sickness, when for a whole year the sky was as brass, and the hot sun beat down upon the land, and withered up the coco-palms and pandanus trees; and only for the night dews all that was green would have perished. And now because of the long drought men were weak, and sickening, and women and children were feint from want of food.
“It is as if God hath deserted us,” said the old man.
“Nay,” I assured him, “have no fear. Rain is near. It will come from the westward as it has come to many islands which for a year have been eaten up with drought and hunger like this land of Nukutavake. Have no fear, I say. Wind and much heavy rain will soon come from the west.”
Then I wrote a few lines to the skipper.
“Send this letter to the ship by my boat,” I said to Teveiva, “and the captain will fill the boat with food. It is the ship's gift to the people.”
And then for the first time since the island had been smitten, the poor women and children laughed joyously, and the men sprang to their feet, and with loud shouts ran to the boat with the messenger who carried the letter.
“Come, old friend,” I said to the teacher, “walk with me round the island. I would once more look upon the lagoon and sit with you a little while as we have sat many times before, under the great toa tree that grows upon the point on the weather side.”
And so we two passed out of the mission house, and hand in hand, like children, went into the quiet village and along the sandy path that wound through the vista of serried, grey-boled palms, till we came to the white, inner beach of the calm lagoon, which shone and glistened like burnished silver. On the beach were some canoes.
Half a cable length from the shore, a tiny, palm-clad islet floated on that shining lake, and the drooping fronds of the palms cast their shadows upon the crystal water. Between the red-brown boles of the trees there showed something white. The old man pointed to it and said:—
“Wilt come and look at the white man's grave? 'Tis well kept—as we promised his mother should be done.”
Teveiva launched a canoe and we paddled gently over to the isle, which was barely half an acre in extent. From the beach there ran a narrow path, neatly gravelled and bordered with many-hued crotons; it led to a low square enclosure of coral stone cemented with lime. Within the walls bright crotons grew thickly, and in the centre stood a plain slab of marble on which was carved:—
I sat on the wall, and looked thoughtfully at the marble slab.
“'Tis twelve years since, Teveiva.”
“Aye, since last Christmas Day. And every year his mother sends a letter and asks, 'Is my boy's grave well kept?' and I write and say, 'It is well tended. One day in every week the women and girls come and weed the path, and see that the plants thrive. This have we always done since thou sent the marble slab.' She sends her letters to the English missionary at Papeite, and he sends mine to her in far away Beretania (Britain).”
“Poor fellow,” I thought; “it was just such a day as this—hot and calm—when we laid him here under the palms.”
On that day, twelve years before, the Asia lay becalmed off the island, and the skipper lowered his boat and came on shore to buy some fresh provisions. He was a cheery old fellow, with snow-white hair, and was brimming over with good spirits, for the Asia had had extraordinary good luck.
“Over a thousand barrels of sparm oil under hatches already, and the Asia not out nine months,” he said to me, “and we haven't lost a boat, nor any whale we fastened to yet. And this boy here,” and he turned and clapped his hand on the shoulder of a young, handsome and stalwart youth, who had come with him, “is my boat-steerer, Walter Tallis, and the dandiest lad with an iron that ever stood up in a boat's bow. Forty-two years have I been fishin', and until Walter here shipped on the old Asia, thought that the Almighty never made a good boat-steerer or boat-header outer eny one but a Yankee or a Portugee—or maybe a Walker Injun. But Walter, though he is a Britisher, was born fer whale-killin'—and thet's a fact.”
I shook hands with the young man, who laughed as he said:—
“Captain Allen is always buttering me up. But there are as good, and better men than me with an iron on board the Asia. But I certainly have had wonderful luck—for a Britisher,” and he smiled slyly at his captain.
Suddenly, we were chatting and smoking on the verandah, there came a thrilling cry from the crew of the whaleboat, lying on the beach fifty yards away.
“Blo-o-w! bl-o-o-w!”
And from the throats of three hundred natives came a roar “Te folau! te folau!” (“A whale! a whale!”)
The skipper and his boat-steerer sprang to their feet and looked seaward, and there, less than a mile from the shore, was a mighty bull cachalot, leisurely making his way through the glassy sea, swimming with head up, and lazily rolling from side to side as if his one hundred tons of bulk were as light as the weight of a flying-fish.
“Now, mister, you shall see what Walter and I can do with that fish,” cried the skipper to me. “And when we've settled him, and the other boats are towing him off to the ship, Walter and I will come on shore again and hev something to eat—if you will invite us.”
The boat flashed out from the beach, swept out of the passage through the reef, and in twenty minutes was within striking distance of the mighty cetacean. And, watching from the verandah, I saw the young harpooner stand up and bury his first harpoon to the socket, following it instantly with a second. Then slowly sank the huge head, and up came the vast flukes in the air, and Leviathan sounded into the ocean depths as the line spun through the stem notch, and the boat sped over the mirror-like sea. In ten minutes she was hidden from view by a point of land, and the last that we on the shore saw was “the dandiest lad that ever stood up in a boat's bow” going aft to the steer-oar, and the old white-headed skipper taking his place to use the deadly lance. And then at the same time that the captain's boat disappeared from view, I noticed that the Asia had lowered her four other boats, which were pulling with furious speed in the direction which the “fast” boat had taken.
“Something must have gone wrong with the captain's boat,” I thought.
Something had gone wrong, for half an hour later one of the four “loose” boats pulled into the beach, and the old skipper, with tears streaming down his rugged cheeks, stepped out, trembling from head to foot.
“My dandy boy, my poor boatsteerer,” he said huskily to me—“that darned whale fluked us, and near cut him in half. Poor lad, he didn't suffer; for death came sudden. An' he is the only son of his mother. Can I bring him to your house?”
Very tenderly and slowly the whaleboat's crew carried the crushed and mutilated form of the “dandiest boy” to the house, and whilst I helped the Asia's cooper make a coffin, Teveiva sat outside with the heartbroken old skipper, and spoke to him in his broken English of the Life Beyond. And so Walter Tallis, the last of an old Dorset family, was laid to rest in the little isle in the quiet lagoon.
For two days our schooner lay in sight of the island; and then, as midnight came, the blue sky became black, and the ship was snugged down for the coming storm. The skipper sent up a rocket so that it might be seen by the people on shore—to verify my prophecy about a change in the weather.
Came then the wind and the sweet, blessed rain, and as the schooner, under reefed canvas, plunged to the rising sea, the folk of Nukutavake, I felt certain, stood outside their houses, and let the cooling Heaven-sent streams drench their smooth, copper-coloured skins, whilst good old Teveiva gave thanks to God.
For the Samoans I have always had a great admiration and affection. Practically I began my island career in Samoa. More than a score of years before Robert Louis Stevenson went to die on the verdured slopes of Vailima Mountain, where he now rests, I was gaining my living by running a small trading cutter between the beautiful islands of Upolu, Savai'i, and Tutuila, and the people ever had my strong sympathies in their struggle against Germany for independence. Even so far back as 1865, German agents were at work throughout the group, sowing the seeds of discord, encouraging the chiefs of King Malietoa to rebel, so that they could set up a German puppet in his place. And unfortunately they have succeeded only too well, and Samoa, with the exception of the Island of Tutuila, is now German territory. But it is as well, for the people are kindly treated by their new masters.
The Samoans were always a warlike race. When not unitedly repelling invasion by the all-conquering Tongans who sent fleet after fleet to subjugate the country, they were warring among themselves upon various pretexts—successions to chiefly titles, land disputes, abuse of neutral territory, and often upon the most trivial pretexts. In my own time I witnessed a sanguinary naval encounter between the people of the island of Manono, and a war-party of ten great canoes from the district of Lepâ on the island of Upolu. I saw sixteen decapitated heads brought on shore, and personally attended many of the wounded. And all this occurred through the Lepâ people having at a dance in their village sung a song in which a satirical allusion was made to the Manono people having once been reduced to eating shell-fish. The result was an immediate challenge from Manono, and in all nearly one hundred men lost their lives, villages were burnt, canoes destroyed, and thousands of coco-nut and bread-fruit trees cut down and plantations ruined.
Sometimes in battle the Samoans were extremely chivalrous, at others they were demons incarnate, as merciless, cold-blooded, and cruel as the Russian police who slaughter women and children in the streets of the capital of the Great White Czar, and I shall now endeavour to describe one such terrible act, which after many years is still spoken of with bated breath, and even amidst the suppressed sobs and falling tears of the descendants of those who suffered.
On the north coast of Upolu there is a populous town and district named Fasito'otai. It is part of the A'ana division of Upolu, and is noted, even in Samoa, a paradise of Nature, for its extraordinary fertility and beauty.
The A'ana people at this time were suffering from the tyranny of Manono, a small island which boasted of the fact of its being the birthplace and home of nearly all the ruling chiefs of Samoa, and the extraordinary respect with which people of chiefly lineage are treated by Samoans, generally led them to suffer the greatest indignities and oppressions by the haughty and warlike Manonoans, who exacted under threats a continuous tribute of food, fine mats and canoes. Finally, a valorous young chief named Tausaga—though himself connected with Manono—revolted, and he and his people refused to pay further tribute to Manono, and a bloody struggle was entered upon.
For some months the war continued. No mercy was shown on either side to the vanquished, and there is now a song which tells of how Palu, a girl of seventeen, with a spear thrust half through her bosom by her brother-in-law, a chief of Manono, shot him through the chest with a horse pistol, and then breaking off the spear, knelt beside the dying man, kissed him as her “brother” and then decapitated him, threw the head to her people with a cry of triumph—and died.
At first the A'ana people were victorious, and the haughty Manonoans were driven off into their fleets of war canoes time and time again. Then Manono made alliance with other powerful chiefs of Savai'i and Upolu against A'ana, and two thousand of them, after great slaughter, occupied the town of Fasito'otai, and the A'ana people retired to inland fortresses, resolved to fight to the very last. Among the leaders of the defeated people were two white men—an Englishman and an American—whose valour was so much admired, even by the Manono people, that they were openly solicited to desert the A'ana people, and come over to the other side, where great honours and gifts of lands awaited them. To their credit, these two unknown men rejected the offer with scorn, and announced their intention to die with the people with whom they had lived for so many years. At their instance, many of the Manono warriors who had been captured had been spared, and kept prisoners, instead of being ruthlessly decapitated in the usual Samoan fashion, and their heads exhibited, with much ignominy, from one village to another, as trophies.
For two years the struggle continued, the Manonoans generally proving victorious in many bloody battles. Then Fasito'otai was surprised in the night, and two-thirds of its defenders, including many women and children, slaughtered. Among those who died were the two white men. They fell with thirty young men, who covered the retreat of the survivors of the defending force.
The extraordinary valour which the A'ana people had displayed, exasperated the Manono warriors to deeds of unnamable violence to whatever prisoners fell into their cruel hands. One man—an old Manono chief—who had taken part in the struggle, told me with shame that he saw babies impaled on bayonets and spears carried exultingly from one village to another.
Broken and disorganised, the beaten A'ana people dispersed in parties large and small. Some sought refuge in the mountain forests, others put to sea in frail canoes, and mostly all perished, but one party of seventeen in three canoes succeeded in reaching Uea (Wallis Island), three hundred miles to the westward of Samoa. Among them was a boy of seven years of age, who afterwards sailed with me in a labour vessel. He well remembered the horrors of that awful voyage, and told me of his seeing his father “take a knife and open a vein in his arm so that a baby girl, who was dying of hunger, could drink”.
Relentless in their hate of the vanquished foe, the Manono warriors established a cordon around them from the mountain range that traverses the centre of Upolu to the sea, and at last, after many engagements, drove them to the beach, where a final battle was fought. Exhausted, famine-stricken, and utterly disheartened by their continuous reverses, the unfortunate A'ana people were easily overcome, and the fighting survivors surrendered, appealing to their enemies to at least spare the lives of their women and children.
But no mercy was shown. As night began to fall, the Manonoans began to dig a huge pit at a village named Maotâ, a mile from the scene of the battle, and as some dug, others carried an enormous quantity of dead logs of timber to the spot. By midnight the dreadful funeral pyre was completed.
In case that it might be thought by my readers that I am exaggerating the horrors of “The Pit of Maotâ,” I will not here relate what I, personally, was told by people who were present at the awful deed, but repeat the words of Mr. Stair, an English missionary of the London Missionary Society, whose book, entitled Old Samoa, tells the story in quiet, yet dramatic language, and although in regard to some minor details he was misinformed, his account on the whole is correct, and is the same as was told to me by men who had actually participated in the tragedy.
The awful preparations were completed, and then the victors, seizing those of their captives who were bound on account of their strength and had a few hours previously surrendered, hurried them to the fatal pit, in which the huge pile of timber had been lit. And as the flames roared and ascended, and the darkness of the surrounding forest was made as light as day, the first ten victims of four hundred and sixty-two were cast in to burn, amid the howls and yells of their savage captors.
Mr. Stair says: “This dreadful butchery was continued during one or two days and nights, fresh timber being heaped on from time to time, as it was with difficulty that the fire could be kept burning, from the number of victims who were ruthlessly sacrificed there.
“The captives from Fasito'otai were selected for the first offerings, and after them followed others in quick succession, night and day, early and late, until the last wretched victim had been consumed. Most heartrending were the descriptions I received from persons who had actually looked on the fearful scenes enacted there.
“Innocent children skipped joyfully along the pathway by the side of their conductors and murderers,{*} deceived by the cruel lie that they were to be spared, and were then on their way to bathe; when suddenly the blazing pile (in the Pit of Noatâ) with the horrid sight of their companions and friends being thrown alive into the midst, told them the dreadful truth; whilst their terror was increased by the yells of savage triumph of the murderers, or the fearful cries of the tortured victims which reached their ears.”
When I first saw the dreadful Tito (pit) of Moatâ, it was at the close of a calm, windless day. I had been pigeon-shooting in the mountain forest, and was accompanied by a stalwart young Samoan warrior. As we were returning to Fasito'otai, he asked me if I would come a little out of the way and look at the “Tito,” a place he said “that is to our hearts, and is, holy ground”. He spoke so reverently that I was much impressed.
Following a winding path we suddenly came in view of the pit. The sides were almost covered with many beautiful varieties of crotons, planted there by loving hands, and it was very evident to me that the place was indeed holy ground. At the bottom of the pit was a dreadful reminder of the past—a large circle of black charcoal running round the sides, and enclosing in the centre a large space which at first I thought was snow-white sand, but on descending into the pit with uncovered head, and looking closer, found it was composed of tiny white coral pebbles. Hardly a single leaf or twig marred the purity of the whiteness of the cover under which lay the ashes of nearly five hundred human beings. Every Saturday the women and children of Fasito'otai and the adjacent villages visited the place, and reverently removed every bit of débris, and the layer of stones, carefully selected of an equal size, was renewed two or three times a year as they became discoloured by the action of the rain. Encompassing the wooded margin of the pit were numbers of orange, lime and banana trees, all in full fruit. These were never touched—to do so would have been sacrilege, for they were sacred to the dead. All around us were hundreds of wood-doves and pigeons, and their peaceful notes filled the forest with saddening melody. “No one ever fires a gun here,” said my companion softly, “it is forbidden. And it is to my mind that the birds know that it is a sacred place and holy ground.”
On the afternoon of the 4th of June, 1885, the Hawaiian labour schooner Mana, of which I was “recruiter” was beating through Apolima Straits, which divide the islands of Upolu and Savai'i. The south-east trade was blowing very strongly and a three-knot current setting against the wind had raised a short, confused sea, and our decks were continually flooded. But we had to thrash through it with all the sail we could possibly carry, for among the sixty-two Gilbert Islands “recruits” I had on board three had developed symptoms of what we feared was small-pox, and we were anxious to reach the anchorage off the town of Mulifanua at the west end of Upolu before dark. At Mulifanua there was a large German cotton plantation, employing four hundred “recruited” labourers, and on the staff of European employés was a resident doctor. In the ordinary course of things we should have gone on to Apia, which was twenty miles farther on, and our port of destination, and handed over my cargo of “recruits” to the manager of the German firm there; but as Mulifanua Plantation was also owned by them, and my “recruits” would probably be sent there eventually, the captain and I decided to land the entire lot at that place, instead of taking them to Apia, where the European community would be very rough upon us if the disease on board did turn out to be small-pox.
As the skipper and I were standing aft, watching the showers of spray that flew over the schooner every time a head sea smacked her in the face, one of the hands shouted out that there was a man in the water, close to on the weather bow. Hauling our head sheets to windward we head-reached towards him, and in a few minutes the man, who was swimming in the most gallant fashion, was alongside, and clambered on board. He was a rather dark-skinned Polynesian, young, and of extremely powerful physique.
“Thanks, good friends,” he said, speaking in halting Samoan. “'Tis a high sea in which to swim. Yet,” and here he glanced around him at the land on both sides, “I was half-way across.”
“Come below,” I said, “and take food and drink, and I will give you a lava-lava (waistcloth).” (He was nude.)
He thanked me, and then again his keen dark eyes were fixed upon Savai'i—three miles distant.
“Art bound to Savai'i?” he asked quickly.
“Nay. We beat against the wind. To-night we anchor at Mulifanua.”
“Ah!” and his face changed, “then I must leave, for it is to Savai'i I go,” and he was about to go over the rail when we held him back.
“Wait, friend. In a little time the ship will be close in to the passage through the reef at Saleleloga” (a town of Savai'i), “and then as we put the ship about, thou canst go on thy way. Why swim two leagues and tempt the sharks when there is no need. Come below and eat and drink, and have no fear. We shall take thee as near to the passage as we can.”
The skipper came below with us, and after providing our visitor with a navy blue waistcloth, we gave him a stiff tumbler of rum, and some bread and meat. He ate quickly and then asked for a smoke, and in a few minutes more we asked him who he was, and why he was swimming across the straits. We spoke in Samoan. “Friends,” he said, “I will tell the truth. I am one of the kau galuega (labourers) on Mulifanua Plantation. Yesterday being the Sabbath, and there being no work, I went into the lands of the Samoan village to steal young nuts and taro. I had thrown down and husked a score, and was creeping back to my quarters by a side path through the grove, when I was set upon by three young Samoan manaia (bloods) who began beating me with clubs—seeking to murder me. We fought, and I, knowing that death was upon me, killed one man with a blow of my tori nui{*} (husking stick) of iron-wood, and then drove it deep into the chest of another. Then I fled, and gaining the beach, ran into the sea so that I might swim to Savai'i, for there will I be safe from pursuit” “'Tis a long swim, man—'tis five leagues.” He laughed and expanded his brawny chest “What is that to me? I have swam ten leagues many times.”