Apia is a half-way station for steamers bound to and from Australia and America. Several steamers from New Zealand pay monthly visits to obtain copra. These steamers usually stay in the harbour for several days; and as the ships cannot draw up to the wharves, they must lie out nearly a mile while the copra is loaded from barges. The natives with boats do a profitable business carrying people to and from ships; and they hire out as guides and take the tourists to Robert Louis Stevenson's old home, and through the largest cocoanut plantation in the world. And when a steamer is seen to drop anchor, the professional entertainers give a big dance. The hat is passed around, and the natives always make a good sum of money.
Apia, Papeete, and Suva, Fiji, are practically the only places in Polynesia where money has a value among the natives. At Apia, the natives know its value so well that they devise every scheme to obtain it, and have developed their money-getting qualities as perfectly as Americans. The best scheme is their semi-annual boat races. Twice a year natives come from all over the islands and enter their boats; betting stands spring up on the beach, and every native who p248 can dig up money will stake all he has on his favourite boat. At such regattas, there are usually excursion steamers from Australia and New Zealand.
Apia is a port of the most famous missionary steamer in the world, the Southern Cross. The steamer fits out every three months at Auckland and goes among the dark and little-known New Hebrides and Solomon Islands. Then she returns and puts such converts as she has found in a missionary school—later to be turned out as full-fledged missionaries and taken back to their homes, there either to backslide into a worse state of cannibalism than that of their fellows, or else to preach the word of God. When a savage from the Solomons does backslide, he is usually the most cannibalistic of his tribe.
Apia, Samoa, was the only real home that Robert Louis Stevenson ever knew. While a young man in Scotland, he was very seldom at home. He made walking trips over England and France, and came to America in the hold of an emigrant ship. After trying to settle down in California, he finally gave it up, and with his wife and her son, Lloyd Osbourne, he chartered the sailing-yacht Casco and spent several years cruising in the South Seas, at last settling down in Apia. About four miles back of the city he built his home on the side of a mountain, where he could command a view of the city and the surrounding bay. This home he named Vailima. Here, with his wife, and Lloyd Osbourne, his secretary, he lived the p249 last years of his life. It was here that he wrote several volumes of South Sea stories.
Stevenson lost no time in making friends with the natives: it was the delight of his life to entertain them at his home. He would take part in their sports; and one chief, who had taken a fancy to him, lived at Vailima, and at certain hours every day he taught Stevenson the Samoan language, while Stevenson taught the chief English. At the top of the mountain, Stevenson built a little pagoda, where he went nearly every day to write. A narrow path had been cut up to the summit through jungles of bananas and guavas, and he would toil for hours in reaching the top. The natives had so much confidence in him that all their troubles and differences were brought to him for settlement. Except in the mornings, which he spent in writing, his time was entirely taken up with the Samoans.
Those who have read many of his works will notice that his characters are almost all big, strong, healthy people—just the opposite of Stevenson, who was always a thin, sickly man. In fact, people who knew him say that he had no use at all for a puny person.
The last year of his life was practically spent in bed, where he wrote his best stories. Along toward the end, the natives would gather in a body and stand around the house in silence, awaiting news of his illness. The last few days there were hundreds and hundreds of natives outside the house, awaiting the end, p250 and when it came, early one morning in 1894, the natives set up the death chant, which spread along their lines until the whole island was wailing at once. Work suspended throughout the island until after the funeral.
Stevenson had requested that he be buried at the summit of the mountain. His coffin was carried by chiefs, while other natives with big knives blazed a road ahead for the procession, through the jungles and to the top.
Of course, the Snark's crew made a visit to Vailima, and then on up to the top, to the grave—nearly ten miles of toil.
At Apia, the German government boasts of the best outfitted observatory in Oceania. Here are all the latest astronomical instruments in charge of ten expert astronomers. It is a splendid set of instruments they have, but—as a native remarked—what is the use of them in Samoa, where there are no cable connections, and should the astronomers see a comet coming toward the earth, they would be so long in letting the greater portion of the people know that there would be no time to dodge!
Apia was the scene of slavery for many years. The schooners would leave here and go among the Solomons and Fiji Islands and steal the natives—blackbird them, as they call it. The natives were then brought to Apia and sold to planters and slave traders, until the German government put a stop to this illegal p251 traffic; but even now, about five hundred blacks a year are brought into these islands, and while the dealers can always give a satisfactory recruiting paper for each native, it is doubtful if the natives ever knew what kind of papers they were signing.
It was in Apia that we learned an interesting piece of Tehei's history. One day while I was walking down the beach road in company with him, a white woman stepped up, and throwing her arms around him, nearly smothered him with her embraces. I thought she was insane, until she started talking with him in his native tongue; and then, turning to me, she told me that Tehei was once sailing in a pearl-lugger among the Taumotu Islands, in a boat captained and owned by her brother. A hurricane had surprised the small crew, and the boat was blown to pieces. The crew was drowned—all but Tehei, who, clinging to a hatch-cover, was washed ashore on one of the reefs where pearlers were at work, and a few months later returned to his home in an open boat that he had worked for while on the reef. He made his way nearly four hundred miles in this open boat, with only a luggersail for power. Tehei had never told of this adventure, but we afterward heard several remarkable exploits of his among the pearling islands.
Apia is full of interesting characters—old beach-combers and retired black-birders, captains and runaway sailors, and ticket-of-leave men from Australia. I know of one man, one of the greatest business men p252 in the town, who is an escaped convict from the French penal settlement in New Caledonia.
The climate here is perfect. With a big wide sandy beach running for miles round the bay, Apia would be an ideal pleasure resort if the steamship connections were better, and if it were nearer to civilisation.
The entire crew of the Snark lived ashore while in Apia, although each one took turn-about staying on board at night. Everything possible was done to make our stay pleasant. Charley Roberts, a race-horse owner, who was ruled off the turf, first in England, then in America, then in Australia, and finally in New Zealand, had come to Apia that he might race horses undisturbed. He had two thoroughbreds shipped from New Zealand; and two aged horses were matched against Charley's thoroughbreds every few weeks; bills were gotten out telling of the big meet, and then the four horses would pull off race after race, always with the same result. Roberts' mind was wholly centred on this sport while we were there. Horses were his one passion. And as he had means, his relatives in Australia were content to have him race horses in Samoa. He got up a special race for us; in fact, he is always glad to have a meet. Anyone going to Apia should have Charley call a meeting of the Apia Turf Association—it would be heartily enjoyed all around.
After two weeks in Apia, we slowly sailed out of the p253 harbour late in the afternoon. Charley Roberts and some friends went out with us as far as they dared, and loaded us down with wines, and, most important of all, eggs.
It was just sundown on one of the most perfect of South Sea evenings that we cleared the island of Upolu and headed for the island of Savaii, only twenty-five miles away. As it became darker, the sky ahead grew red, and as we approached the island we could clearly see tongues of fire issuing from the mouth of the big crater, and gradually small threads of fire running down the mountainside—threads that grew into glowing torrents as we came closer, until by midnight we were sailing up the coast of an island that seemed to be literally aflame. The crater of the volcano is twenty-five miles inland, and about ten thousand feet high, the land sloping gradually down to the sea, where it ends in an abrupt precipice, one hundred feet high. For miles and miles, red-hot sputtering lava rolled into the sea, sending up clouds of vapour. Two miles from the seashore, we could read print plainly. As we were getting into the lee of the land, where the wind was likely to drop any minute, Jack told me to start the engines; then we slid along the shore, edging in as far as possible. The air got hot and sultry, and steam was rising from the water all about us. Jack stationed the cook in the bow with a thermometer, and every few minutes he would cry the temperature, until p254 the water was nearly at boiling-point; then we were afraid to go in farther on account of the thousand gallons of gasolene aboard.
Henry, our new Kanaka sailor, knew this coast well, and was to take us to a certain village where he was known, but at nearly two o'clock in the morning we were still skirting the rivers of lava, and the village was not in sight. By the light of the boiling lava we could see ruined villages and hundreds of thousands of naked cocoanut trees, stripped of their foliage and standing straight and threadbare in the fiery glow, like trimmed poles. Henry finally managed to distinguish the village he was taking us to, but it was dead and deserted. The lava was all-destructive. We could get no closer than a mile to the shore, and then steamed on up the coast, hoping to find some place that had not been seared by the fires. We would get nearly to the shore, only to see a reeking stream of lava, further back and creeping down to the sea. Then on we would go again. Everyone else in the boat was awestruck by such wholesale destruction; they were leaning over the rail in wonder, without any idea of the possibility of the engine's stopping, but my heart was in my mouth all the time, for the wind had dropped, and had the engines ever stopped, it would have been all up with us—nothing could have kept us away from those cascades of lava. But luck was certainly with us. The engine ran smoothly, and as the first streaks of day lighted the east, we sighted a village p255 that was unharmed and showing signs of human occupation. Henry pronounced this place to be Matautu, and we decided to anchor. After things were safely stowed, everyone went to sleep on deck, after a hard night's work.
It was late in the afternoon before anyone awoke. As we felt like going ashore after our rest, Jack and Mrs. London and myself set out in the launch. We came to a deserted beach. There were no natives in sight, although we could hear the hum of voices back in the village. As the beach ran out so far in a gradual slope, we were forced to anchor the launch out several hundred yards, and wade ashore. We walked up the beach to the village, whence we had heard the voices, and found several hundred natives before a small church, all praying that the lava would not come down and destroy their village. Two young girls in the centre of the group were dressed in gala array of feathers and tapa cloths of gay colours, and each was carrying an ornamental club. They simply stood in the centre, taking no part in the ceremonies. They were the first to see us, and quietly motioning to the assembly, spoke a few words. The crowd dispersed, all going away talking in quiet tones, but even if we could not understand, it was easy to guess that they were still supplicating for the eruption to cease; and their quiet manner left no doubt that they had supreme confidence in the potency of prayer.
The two girls who had first sighted us were called, p256 in the Samoan language, taupou girls. Each village in Samoa has its taupou girl, only one to the village, who upholds the honour of that village, entertains the guests, and otherwise makes herself agreeable. She controls the feasts and functions, and in fact has more power than anyone, excepting the chief. As she is really the most virtuous woman in the village, she is made the highest dignitary at all religious gatherings, although taking no part in them.
All the villages for twenty miles up the coast had been destroyed and the people had fled to Matautu. There were about twenty taupou girls gathered here. As Jack said, they looked like girls out of a job, for when they leave their own village, they lose power. Certainly they had not shown much power in letting the lava destroy their homes. Only the Matautu taupou girls seemed to be still in favour. These girls attached themselves to Mrs. London and showed us over the village. But such a woe-begone village! On all sides the red-hot lava was creeping down, though they had managed to divert the flow by building stone walls; but they knew that unless the volcano twenty-five miles away quieted down, their homes were doomed. It was dark when we prepared to go back to the Snark. We were stopped just as we got to the launch by a white man, calling to us on the beach. We went back and found a big, jolly Irishman, waiting for us in company with a tall German.
The Irishman was Dick Williams, the governor of p257 the island, and the German was the agent of an Apia trading concern. We went back with the governor to his house, and learned that he had been away all day helping the volcano sufferers. He invited us to stay ashore all night, promising to show us a better view of the eruption the next day. So, after a crowd of Kanakas had carried the launch up on the beach, we went to nicely furnished grass houses that the governor owned, and next morning, after a bath on the beach, we started for the lava flows with the two white men as guides. We walked miles between two flows of lava—hot lava that scorched our hair. At one place, we passed the frame of a grass house set between the walls of an old church. The owner had thought that on account of its being near a church of God it would not be ruined, and his goods would be safe. We walked over beds of lava that had cooled for several days and that, encrusted, would bear our weight; but we knew what lay beneath, for here and there, where there were fissures in the cooled crust, spits of steam and bubbling jets of lava flowed outward into the air. At one place, we found a remarkable thing—a small churchyard that had been unmolested by the flow. It looked as if the stream had parted and gone around the graveyard and joined into one stream after the place had been passed. We went on farther to a fresh lava stream that had just broken out. Close by was a large frame house, the home of the former governor of Savaii, now deserted. Here a p258 mass of lava, about three feet in thickness and several hundred yards wide, was slowly coming toward the house; red and glowing, it was advancing about an inch a minute. With long sticks we gathered the lava and pressed coins into it, to keep for souvenirs. As we returned by way of the church graveyard, we stood in the plot marvelling at such a miracle—that the molten destruction had parted at this burial place!—and we ceased to look upon the Kanaka who had built his house inside the churchyard as a joke: he had sufficient reason, after seeing the graveyard saved, to believe that his own home would be preserved.
As we came to the edge of the village, we skirted a fresh flow of lava, creeping up on a church. Inside the place were crowds of natives, all praying at once that the church be saved. They were coughing and wiping their eyes from the effects of the sulphur fumes that were enveloping them. We stood and watched this sad sight. Soon the people filed out, slowly, forlornly, and we stood by to see the end. In half an hour the first of the lava struck the building, and soon was running in the doors, setting fire to everything inflammable. Next morning when I looked for the church I found only a mass of ruins.
We lived ashore five days, and on the last day I rode nearly twenty-five miles, trying to reach the leeward side of the crater, but the barefoot native guide turned back after it grew too hot for his unprotected flesh, and I got only to within half a mile of the crater, p259 but near enough to see the awful yawning hole, nearly a mile across, emitting thousands and thousands of tons of liquid death every minute. I sat on the charred log of a cocoanut tree and wondered where it all came from. Certainly, wherever it was formed, there was no dearth of material. I afterward saw many volcanoes, but none of them had the impressive magnificence of this.
We left the harbour in the afternoon of the fifth day; our two taupou-girl friends came aboard to say good-bye, and as we looked over to their village and asked them to tell good-bye to our friends ashore whom we had not been able to see, they turned their eyes shoreward and burst into tears, for already a narrow stream of lava had broken through their village, and it would be only a matter of a few days when they would be living in another village, shorn of power, and their own pretty homes would be in ashes under the lava.
So it was that we up-anchored and set out for the Fijis, where we were to lose our last and final captain. p260
From the Samoan Islands to the Fijis, the distance is nine hundred miles. After we had cleared the Samoan Islands, we ran along under power for several hours; then the sails were set, and by sun-down we were speeding along under an eight-knot wind, which grew stronger and stronger, until by midnight all hands were on deck taking in the headsails and reefing the mainsails. By morning we were in the grip of a summer gale, but luckily for us it was in the right direction, and with only a double-reefed staysail and a triple-reefed mizzen, we plunged along at about twelve knots an hour. Big waves, looking as large as a courthouse, would come roaring up to us, and the little Snark would rise on the side and hover over the dizzy depths of watery valleys—then down we would go with that queer sensation that one experiences in riding on a swift elevator, feeling as if we were falling out from under ourselves; and sometimes two waves would come so close together that the second one would break against the side of the Snark with such force as to throw everyone off his feet, and whoever was steering could only save himself by hugging the wheel. At such times as this, it was difficult to steer. For it is not just a matter of pointing a ship the way you want p261 to go and then keeping the wheel geared that way, but it is a matter of watching a big wave and then easing up into it to keep from being broken into splinters; and the sails must be watched every second, for should the wind ever get behind them, they would swing across deck with such force as to drag the masts out of the ship, and everything on deck would be carried away. It looks easy enough to steer a ship, but it takes a person six months to get experience enough in it to be trusted alone at the wheel.
For three days we ran along in the teeth of the gale. Everything on deck that had not been made fast was carried away. The small boats had been taken in from the davits and lashed upside down on the deck. No fire could be made in the galley, so we lived mostly on hardtack. Everything above and below was saturated with salt water. In the afternoon of the third day, the squall broke as quickly as it had formed, leaving us rolling on a glassy-smooth sea. The wind dropped nearly calm and the mists cleared away, so that we could see the horizon. It is well known how clear the air gets after a storm. Well, we were so tired that we were for turning into our bunks, until Henry cried, "Reef ahead!" and on going into the rigging, I saw reef on all sides of us. Immediately, the sails were backed, and we hove-to. I started the engines; then, for the rest of the day, we went round and round the inside of the lagoon, trying to find the place we had gotten in at. It looked as if we were p262 lost. Each effort puzzled us only the more. All night we kept up the attempt to find the passage, but it was not until morning that we found it, a gap in the reef about two hundred feet wide. And there were twenty-five miles of reef we might easily have struck on! How we ever got into the place is a mystery, and remains a mystery to this day.
There was not an island in sight. It was nearly sun-down when we did sight several small islands, and after threading in and out of countless reefs, we managed to get penned up in another lagoon, where we lay-to for the night. Next day was a repetition of the one before. So also was the next. For several days we dodged in and out of reefs and around small islands, charted as the Ringgold Islands. At times we were in despair. To find the concealed openings in the reef was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. On the eighth day we sighted clear water ahead, and slipping out between two of the largest islands, Vanua Levu and Taviuni, we slid into the Koro Sea, which is the name of the two hundred miles of water that is made into a lagoon by hundreds of small islands circling around it. Only one small island is inside this sea, and Jack had decided to go up along the shores of this island and have a look at the villages. We were perhaps five miles off the land when a small cutter put out, and heading toward us, would have passed our bow, but the helmsman swerved around and passed close enough to speak. He was a woolly-headed p263 Fiji-Islander. His shouting awoke a white man who was asleep below. On coming on deck, the white man rubbed his eyes and sleepily asked: "What ship is that?" We replied: "Snark, San Francisco." Then he yelled: "Is that Jack London's boat?" We told him it was. "Heave-to, I'm coming aboard," he cried; and as we were in no hurry to get anywhere, we hove-to, and he came about and also hove-to. Then, in a little dingy, he was rowed to the Snark, and he just fell all over himself with joy. "And to think that I should ever see Jack London, and on his own boat, too! Why, I have every one of your books aboard my ship, and all your magazine articles. But, pshaw! the boys won't believe I ever saw Jack London." And he nearly cried, he was so happy.
Frank Whitcomb had been trading nearly all his life in the Fiji Islands, and Jack London's books had been about all he had read. I believe that in his eyes Jack was the greatest man that ever lived.
He loaded us down with fresh fruits and onions and potatoes. In return, we gave him several bottles of wine. And the last thing that long, lanky Frank Whitcomb said as he was rowed away from the Snark was: "And to think that I should live to shake hands with Jack London, and on his own boat, too!" Whitcomb was the only man who ever boarded the Snark at sea.
As we sailed past the solitary island in the Koro Sea, several boats tried to put off to us, but we were in a hurry, and so did not wait for them to get over the p264 reef, but sailed on until by night we were again among small islands and were forced to heave-to until morning.
From the time we had left Samoan waters, it was Jack who always located our true position on the chart. Jack told me that if he must do the navigating, he could and would do it and would not be bothered with anyone else. So everyone on board suspected that Captain Y—— was to be discharged at Suva, Fiji. The captain had gotten angry at Wada and had broken his nose, and had it not been for Mrs. London, I think he would have laid Nakata out, so no one was sorry that we were to be rid of him.
The next morning after our meeting with Frank Whitcomb, we set sail, after being hove-to all night, and passed all sorts of queer crafts, most of them of bamboo, and soon were threading in and out of countless little green islands, going so close sometimes that we could plainly make out villages. Now and then canoes would put off to us. At one place, we went close enough to shore to see people plainly; they ran down to the beach, shouting at us. We passed many strange raft-like crafts, made of split bamboo. On some of the crafts we could see whole families, who stared at us in wonder as we slid past. These vessels were in some cases loaded with fruits and sandalwood and copra. I saw several of the same crafts come into Suva Harbor again after a week's journey at sea. The p265 natives have no fear, and will sometimes live for months on their queer floats without stepping ashore.
Henry was not slow in taking advantage of the smooth water, and supplied our table with different kinds of fish every day; in fact, we always fished in preference to everything else. While calmed or anchored, he caught many a shark without hook or line, by the old Kanaka method of spearing them while they lie asleep on the bottom in shallow water.
It was nearly ten days after we had been tangled up in the Fiji Islands when we sighted the large island of Viti Levu, and turned the Snark's bow into another of the South Seas' famous ports. Suva, Fiji, looms up from the sea, quite like a modern city, and is really the most modern in this part of the world. Nearly half of its eight thousand persons are of white blood; and Suva is also chief station of the Pacific commercial cables. Several modern hotels and large headquarters for the trading concerns are to be found here.
Fiji is also the headquarters for the British commissioners of the whole of the South Sea possessions, and here is located the British penal settlement. Prisoners are sent here from all the English possessions in the South Seas.
We dropped anchor under supervision of Captain Wooley, the harbour inspector, and by nightfall Jack and Mrs. London were installed at Mrs. McDonald's hotel, the most famous hotel in Oceania. p266
Directly we had dropped anchor, Captain Y—— went ashore, and walking up and down the streets of Suva, he would have everyone know that Captain Y—— of the Snark was in town. His boasting led him from saloon to saloon; and soon he was so drunk that he could hardly walk. I left him telling of his sea-experiences to a bunch of bar-flies, and went to the hotel and had late dinner with the Londons. Captain Y—— did not come aboard that night. Next morning, when Jack arrived, he asked me to pack all of Y—— 's possessions and take them ashore; also, he instructed us not to allow the captain to come aboard again. I had taken Captain Y—— 's clothing ashore and was making the rounds of stores, buying clothes that I had had no chance to get since leaving Honolulu. In my absence, Captain Y—— had gone aboard the Snark, and was showing the yacht to the captain of a big six-masted schooner. He ordered Nakata to bring drinks on deck, but Nakata refused, telling him that Mr. London had said he was discharged. Poor Captain Y—— must have felt very cheap in company with his old captain-friend, but he left the Snark without making a fuss, and a few days later sailed away on the six-master as an ordinary seaman—quite a come-down, from skipper of a smart yacht to the lowest position on a windjammer.
While Suva was very modern for a South Sea city, one had only to go a few miles into the interior of the island to find primitive life. I was lucky enough to p267 get in with a party on an excursion trip across the bay and up several small streams, and spent several days among the mango swamps, seeing strange people. We had a party of Fiji prisoners to row our boat, and we went miles and miles through a dense forest of tropical trees. Every now and then, some native in his little canoe would stop to look at us in wonder.
Once a native reporter on the Fiji Times—his English name was George Dyer—took me over to his island to attend church. The natives all gathered in a little wooden building and squatted on a bare floor in front of the preacher, a big, bushy-haired man, who preached after the style of some of our old-fashioned exhorters. The parishioners wore nothing but loin-cloths and their wonderful mops of hair.
There was an intermission, which I misconstrued into dismissal of services and went outside to sit on a big hollow log that came handy. Pretty soon the pastor came out and tapped me on the shoulder. I could not make out what he wanted, so asked George. "He wants you," replied the boy, "to get off the log so that he can ring the bell." It developed that the preacher hammered on the log to call the congregation together, and I was unwittingly muffling the call of the Gospel.
Arriving back in Suva, I was kept busy getting the Snark in shape for another long voyage, doing the work that Captain Y—— had done as well as my own. p268
Everyone has heard of the wild and savage cannibals of the South Sea islands, and to the average mind, either the whole of the South Pacific is inhabited by man-eaters, or the idea that such bloodthirsty creatures exist is simply scoffed at.
Hitherto I have told of the gentle, big, brown inhabitants of the eastern islands, known as Polynesia. But now we have come into Melanesia. Let me try to describe, as modestly yet graphically as possible, the first of the Melanesians that the Snark crew came in contact with.
It is hard to tell of these savages. Yet, in writing of them, I simply state facts. These people exist. There are at this time some seventy thousand of them in the New Hebrides Islands. Very few white people have ever seen them. They can scarcely be written about in language sufficiently plain to give a definite idea of them. The hundred or more pictures I made of these cannibals cannot be printed in a volume intended for popular circulation.
Probably it is best to describe these people as one would describe animals. For they are only one degree removed from the animals. I wish I might speak plainly. But a great deal of the modesty in our ultra-civilised p269 state is a false modesty, inasmuch as it is not based upon necessity. It is this fact that constitutes the difficulty when one attempts to describe a race living in absolute savagery, unwitting of those rules of conduct we have laid down for our guidance, a race whose social relations are vastly different from ours. This much, however, I must say. Our so-called "proper" clothing is in many cases designed solely for purposes of suggestion. Men and women who go stark naked every day of their lives are oftentimes more moral and have stronger natural modesty than certain of those who bedizen themselves with fashionable silks and satins.
In my studies of various peoples as I have journeyed round this earth, I have found many queer customs and fashions. In some countries, they squeeze the foot to make it small, and a woman with a large foot is a social outcast. In other countries they cover parts of the face. An Arabian woman would expose her entire body in order to keep the lower part of her face hidden. The Chinese men, as a sign of rank and distinction, develop long finger-nails, and we can well remember when our own women wore ridiculously large bustles that looked very funny on the street. By the way, speaking of bustles, I wish to say that the habit of wearing them did not originate in any of the fashion-centres. Bustles have always been and now are the only article of apparel worn by the women of the New Hebrides. And funny as these women look with p270 only large plaited grass bustles on them, we must not consider them foolish, for they have just as much right to their fashions as the women of America, England, France, Germany, or any other civilised country, have to theirs.
Having seen all these fashions, I am willing to grant to men or women the perfect liberty to dress or adorn themselves, or go undressed, as they see fit. Having, as I believe, seen the origin of the bustle among these primitive folk, I fully expect to see some day the prettiest ladies of our land wearing enormous nose-rings, as there are places in the world where such nose-rings constitute the entire wardrobe.
Ignorance is not virtue. Virtue is knowledge coupled with self-restraint. And so let me call attention to a people who are as directly opposed to us in their views of morality as could be imagined. These people are sex worshippers, and their ideas of right and wrong lead them to call attention to the very subjects we seek to hide and dismiss from our minds.
To go back to Suva, Fiji. Captain Warren was no longer a member of the Snark's crew. As we lay alongside the wharf at Suva, the crew painted and scraped masts, decks and booms, and after loading with water and provisions, we were again ready for sea. Tehei was dressed in his first suit of clothes, of which he was as proud as a peacock. Our compasses were swung and adjusted by an expert. Our chronometer was taken aboard an Australian steamer p271 and corrected, and we were ready to try our luck with Captain Jack London. And when I think of the crew of the Snark, I always think of the crew that sailed out of Fiji, and the same crew that stuck to the trip to the end. Up to this time, I had seen come and go three captains, two engineers, several sailors and a cabin-boy. The crew that sailed from Suva included Mr. and Mrs. London, myself, and four dark-skinned persons: Nakata, the Jap cabin-boy, Wada San, the Jap cook, and the two Tahitians, Tehei and Henry.
We cleared Suva Harbor at 12:30 on the afternoon of Saturday, June 6, 1908. The harbour master, with his crew of Fiji convicts, was the last to leave; then we just slid out of the bay with a strong beam wind, and in an hour had left Suva out of sight. We passed a small cutter, and her crew of bushy-haired Fijians cried good-bye in their own language, and dipped their flag. About four o'clock we got to the entrance of a very narrow channel and between two small islands. I took the wheel, and Jack sang out the course from the bow. By six o'clock we were through and headed for the open sea, at which everyone was glad, for reefs and small islands cause much worry.
The next day I cleaned up the engine room and did small carpentering jobs about the ship. The sea was quite rough, and we had the skylights battened down; but because of the clearness of the sky we did not expect very nasty weather. We were speeding at about seven knots. All day, Jack studied navigation. For p272 the first several days out of Fiji he had no time to write. He navigated by every method known to captains, and then proved his navigating as we used to prove our arithmetic problems at school. On Wednesday morning, I took the time while he got the sight; then we corrected the two compasses, he watching one compass and I the other. Jack figured that day that we had done ten thousand miles in the Snark since leaving San Francisco.
That evening, Jack announced that at a certain point on the compass, at sunrise next morning, would be the first island in the New Hebrides, called Futuna, and next morning at five o'clock there was a call for all hands on deck. I hurried up, expecting to see a storm closing in on us, but instead the sky was clear and Jack was excitedly pointing to a rocky island at the exact place he had told us of the night before. Jack said: "I told you so," and for the rest of that day he went around with his head up in the air, with the bearing of a person who knew much more than any others on board, and we all looked at him in awe and told him he was a great navigator.
Futuna was a high, flat rock, as seen from the sea. We did not go close enough to examine it. We had a good breeze, and all that day we passed small uninhabited islands, and that night slowed down, for the island of Tanna was directly ahead, and we were afraid to go into the bay at night; but early next morning we p273 dropped anchor opposite a mission station in a long, narrow bay.
The third cylinder igniters blew out when I tried to use the engine to help us into this bay, and we had trouble in finding an entrance, for the place seemed reef-locked, but we took a chance, and finally got in. We anchored one hundred yards off a high bluff, on the top of which was a little white church, almost hidden by the dense jungle. We saw clumsy canoes coming toward us, and soon two hundred of the puniest, dirtiest, most unhealthy little thieving natives came aboard. All afternoon they kept arriving in canoe-loads. All wore remnants of white men's clothing, filthy beyond description. Some had only an undershirt; some, old trousers; and there were old hats of all kinds. One carried an umbrella. Others, again, wore red singlets, so full of holes they would scarcely hang on their backs. Their ears were pierced with holes I could have stuck my thumb through. They were all missionaries from the mission school on the top of the hill—and great missionaries they were! In the afternoon, when we three whites started ashore, we cleared the deck of the natives, and they cleared the deck of any spare ropes or marlin they could find loose. We missed nearly everything that was small enough for the natives to get away with. We went ashore and had dinner with the only missionary on the island, Rev. Watt. He p274 had been for twenty-eight years at this station, and had managed to convert the coast natives only, but in the interior the natives were as savage and primitive as the day God had made them—he sighed when he told us of the interior natives. We asked him to take us on an excursion to see these natives, but he flung up his hands in horror. "No! It was no place for a woman," and we could not persuade him to alter his decision. He told us of a lawless trader living on the island, and for us to be careful of him, he was a very bad man; he was friendly with the bush natives. And right then Jack whispered to me that we must find that bad, wicked trader and get him to take us to visit the savages that we had sailed thousands and thousands of miles to see. On going aboard that night, we found the wicked trader sitting on our deck, smoking Jack's cigarettes. He was a big, jolly-looking Scotchman. He was overjoyed to see us, for it is mighty few white people that Trader Wiley ever sees in Tanna. He had been trading here for over seven years. In order to trade among the different tribes, he had learned their languages, and to gain their friendship had doctored the sick and set broken bones. He had been the means of bringing peace between several of the tribes that before his advent had been continually at war. But the missionary considered him a bad man because he had gained such a hold on the natives, and, doctoring their ills and injuries, refused to doctor their souls. p275
Mr. Wiley stayed for supper, and told us some interesting yarns of the island. Up to one year ago, the different tribes were at war with each other. No tribe dared go outside its own boundaries, unless it wished to precipitate a rumpus. But the English warship Cambrian came and threw bombs in some of the villages, and now the natives were quiet through fear of having their homes destroyed. It had been three years, Mr. Wiley said, since a cannibalistic feast took place, and he had been there to see it. Having the confidence of the natives because he smuggled old-fashioned "Springfield" rifles in to them, he was allowed to go and come as he pleased. He had gone up into the bush after copra one day, after one tribe had been defeated by the tribe he was visiting, and was asked to stay and watch the feast that night, which he did—he found four bodies cooked and ready to eat, with the heads off and the bowels removed.
Of course he would show us the bush people; but he warned us that they were not the kind of people that we had been used to. It was agreed that on Sunday, June 22, he was to take us up to the village where he had seen the cannibal feast. On Saturday, Jack and Mrs. London went to see one of the most noted volcanoes in the New Hebrides, which is located on this island. I wandered up and down the bay, looking in the village huts and trying to find curios, but the natives seemed to have none. One little four-foot grass hut p276 and a few dirty mats is all the average man here possesses.
I gossiped with Mr. Wiley and his partner, Mr. Stanton, in their little 10-x-15 store, where they ate, slept and traded. Very little money was in circulation; they traded out of their stock for copra. One stick of cheap tobacco bought ten cocoanuts; and three sticks would hire a man for one day to take the meat from the nut and dry it into copra; so it will be seen that the remuneration of labour in the New Hebrides is nothing magnificent. One stick of tobacco is worth a cent.
Saturday night, Jack, Mrs. London and I took supper with Rev. Watt. The missionary was a fairly decent sort of man, but I don't approve of his methods. In the evening, I developed film in his dark-room.
Early Sunday morning, Tehei landed us on the beach, where we found Frank Stanton waiting for us. He explained that Mr. Wiley was sick and could not go. We four started off, and for several hours tramped over hills and through valleys, penetrating a jungle of trees and vines and ferns so dense that in places we walked through pitch-dark recesses, into which the sun had never shone. Sometimes we rested under a big banyan tree, with its hundreds of roots and its branches turning and growing back into the ground until the single tree might cover as much as a half acre. We passed several of Mr. Stanton's copra houses, where he came on certain days each week to p277 buy cocoanuts; then we struck off through a deep ravine, the walls forty and fifty feet high, with just enough room for us to walk single-file. All the time, we were gradually rising higher and higher above the sea-level. Often we had to pull Mrs. London up after us, but she was game and never lagged a bit. About one o'clock we emerged without warning into a clearing set on the side of a mountain, a clearing about a half-mile across. Many grass houses were set in a circle around this clearing. In the centre of the circle squatted about fifty men, as many children, and a few women. They were the most savage, heathenish looking folk I have ever looked upon. I had heard of and seen pictures of such savages, but I had hardly been able to convince myself that such animals existed: but here was ocular demonstration. They were smeared over their bodies with coloured juices from berries, and several of the younger men had queer white designs painted on their faces. The men wore belts around their waists—that was all; around their ankles were anklets of porpoise shell or cocoanut shell, and there were some that were carved of stone. Many wore strings of white shells around their necks. Through their enormously distended ear-lobes were thrust pieces of wood as big as one's wrist, or ear-rings of porpoise shell. But the crowning beauty was their heads. The hair, dyed red, was about a foot long. Locks of about one hundred hairs were wrapped from the roots to within one inch of the end with cocoanut p278 fibre; and the whole head was one cluster of these bunches. And every man carried a large knife. As for the women, they wore a dried palm-leaf hung on in front by a string around the waist; except for a miscellaneous collection of anklets, bracelets, and necklets, this was all they wore.
Most of these savages broke for the bush when they sighted us; all but fifteen or twenty who knew Mr. Stanton well. Stanton spoke to them; they advanced with hands outstretched; and we shook hands all around.
"How can I describe these people in my diary?" Mrs. London asked.
"'Worse than naked,' and let it go at that," Jack replied.
And so, in turn, I can describe these people at no greater length and no better than to say, as Jack said, that they were worse than naked. For several hours we sat with them in the clearing, and showed how Mrs. London's Winchester could shoot eleven times in the twinkling of an eye. I made dozens of photographs, and tried to photograph the women; but they were very shy. I got only one, as she was diving into her house.
The men who had run for the bush we could see on all sides of us, peeping around trees and through the dense brush at the edges of the jungle. They were armed with spears, so we kept our hands on our guns all the time, but Stanton assured us they were not dangerous. p279 Nevertheless, we were not going to take any risks.