were at. For somebody would stop in and look at us, and go give the news—a little pile of small boys and girls, three rows deep, sat respectfully under the bread-fruit trees watching us. But somehow or other the morning wore away, and by two o’clock we were told that all was ready, and that we had better come to the house chosen for us to occupy during the ceremony. Meanwhile, behind the trees that closed in the sight (for the village was placed, if I may so describe it, in an irregular open grove of many kinds of trees), we had seen for the last hour or so, dressed-up figures moving about; men with large green garlands, and green cinctures around their waists stiffened out and made larger by great folds of new bark-cloth, or by the fine wearing mats which are the most precious possession of the Samoan: some of them with guns carried with pride, for these were men who had been victorious and had beaten off the bullying German.

And now we took our places in the circular house which looked like a pavilion, and which stood on the east of the large open space near the church. Opposite us perhaps some two hundred feet or more was another house, and others spread to right and left, leaving a large space ending on one side near the church, whose white façade had written on it its name, Lupeanoa, Noah’s Dove—enclosed by a little clump of trees to the left, where we could see figures moving with great swaying of leaf girdles and waist-mats—and the occasional beat of a war-drum came from further back.

We were seated, all facing toward the open space, the next house filled with women and children: Seumanu and our host and other people of importance near us, and the rest of the house packed, but not too closely, behind us. Out on the grass and near trees people sat, mostly women. Others moved slowly to take their places, showing some vestiges of yesterday’s Sunday in their hats and long gowns.

Then rushed across them a man all blacked, with a high white turban bound to his head, with green strips of leaves, a few leaves for a girdle, and waving a paddle. This was a friend of Seu’s—a funny man and joker, with a hand maimed or deformed—the deformed in such communities take things gayly and are jokers. He shrieked out things that caused shouts of laughter, and repeated “Alofa Atamo!” From behind the church came out a mass of warriors, with banana leaves in their hair, and wearing girdles of the long green leaves of the ti: their backs were streaked with white lines following the spine and the ribs, and their faces and bodies were blacked. They carried their rifles high and discharged them into the air, then cantered past and away. Again the buffoon and again the warriors.

Meanwhile in the distance, in the opening of trees, we could

see other warriors: behind them the drum and the little fife made a curious war music, and a peculiar shout and call with a short cadence came from the men. Unconcernedly a girl moved across the opening in front, intent on something else, and a hunch-backed dwarf, with enormous wide shoulders and long legs edged with green leaves, came to us and shouted “alofa!” Then six warriors again emerged from the grove, swinging their clubs, and marched back leaving the green space before us empty and silent.

Slowly now, moving step by step, the mass of people behind the trees came out, so that they could be seen. In front of the men and of the music a girl, with black, shaggy waist garment, like thin fur, with long red necklaces of beads, and flowers in her hair, danced slowly to the tune, crossing and uncrossing her feet in a hopping step, and swinging with both hands a slight club in front of her, as a drum major might move his stick. Slowly she advanced, escorted by two men clad in mats and garlands, upon whose heads stood out a mass of yellow hair, like the cap of a grenadier, supported by circles of shells around the forehead. They also kept time to the music, but did not repeat the girl’s monotonous step that made the central point of interest to which the eye always returned.

This girl was the taupo, the virgin of the village, dancing and marching in her official place at the head of the warriors—like Taillefer, the Norman minstrel who began the battle of Hastings. When she had moved slowly a few yards, one could see that behind in the crowd there were two other girls representing other villages, who also repeated these movements, while some of the men danced and others stepped slowly with crossed arms, holding their clubs and muskets. And the virgin danced forward and passed, and then up the slope toward us, followed by the other girls, and all saluted us; when the whole assembly in the field came up suddenly and threw down before us leaf baskets containing taro and yams, and cooked things wrapped up in leaves, and fish, and a number of little sucking pigs, with hind legs tied, that struggled up and down in the heaps of leaves. As each person threw his load down he stalked away gravely and took a seat somewhere in the distance. All became silent. I could see the taupos moving off with that peculiar walk of the dancer who is resting. A warrior with high white turban of bark cloth sat down against a tree near us, without looking to the right or left, his gun against his shoulder, and smoked gravely, while a girl, his daughter perhaps, leaned affectionately against him. Meanwhile the sucking pigs had been escaping with hind-legs tied, and every now and then Charlie pulled them back into place.

Then rose the orator, the tulafale, from the centre of the three rows of men now seated opposite to us, across the green space, and from two hundred feet away, addressed us slowly as he leaned upon his stick, and seemed not to raise his voice beyond what was absolute necessity. But the cadence always rose in the last words, so that the effect to the ear was of a distinct, emphatic assertion. Then he added, “This is all,” and sat down, apparently inattentive and indifferent. Our turn came next. Anai, the chief, translated to us the usual speech of great gratitude to America for having saved them from slavery and from the Germans, and compliments to us all, with prayers to God to have us in his holy keeping. Then a few things were suggested between us, and our political man said what was necessary, and alas, even more: for how can the United States promise anything—that may depend on sugar—or an election, or at any rate is merely a matter of barter? Anai stepped out from the house and repeated all this in Samoan, speaking also quite gently, with little raising of the voice. Nobody seemed to listen, nobody to care, but this was only apparent. All heard and had listened.

Then our own men, who had been hidden somewhere, sprang upon the presents and sorted them: one of them stood up and called them out: so much of this, so much of that, to give full acknowledgment for liberality. Then another spring, and all was carried away, even to the struggling, sucking pigs that could not be made to understand.

Momentary peace settled over everything, and we had begun to ask questions and to sketch, when we were told that now we should have a siva, that several villages would appear in it by their performers, as they had appeared in the military display. Men came up garlanded and cinctured in flowers and leaves, and sat down in double rows before us, some turning toward us, others away. Out of their number first one, then others arose and sat down again in order, fronting us, and the siva began; six handsome young men, singing and swaying about upon their hips, to a chant for which time was beaten behind them.

The sun was setting; tired out and amused we walked back in the crowd, stopping to exchange alofas with belated warriors who showed us their guns and occasional wounds, which with the Samoan idea of a joke they pretended had been caused by running against wire fences.

We had seen for the first time a pageantry of savage war, in a soft light, in the most peaceful and idyllic of landscapes, so that it was hard to realize again that this was not all a theatre scene, a fête champêtre—a play in the open air. There was nothing to contradict this unreality but the marks of ugly gashes on the arms and chests of the men and the

recall of the savage melody, which was undeniably a war song, requiring no explanation as to its meaning.

In the house we ate our meal spread out on banana leaves, two of the taupos coming in to help us by breaking the taro and yams, and tearing the fish and fowls. Then while wishing for nothing but bed and rest, and closed eyes, we were told that there would be a night siva in our honour, and that other taupos would figure in it. There was nothing to do but yield, and with each a taupo to accompany us, we went back to the house that we had occupied in the afternoon. It was already half filled with people, occupying one side of it. I sat down against an outside post, alongside of my taupo, next to whom Seumanu reclined at length with another girl, an old acquaintance, near him, and I tried to keep awake while the siva went on enthusiastically. At times I would start with some new figure or more picturesque effect, or when fresh fuel was added to the cocoanut fire that fit the scene within. Along the posts of the exterior sat chiefs watching the dance: behind them outside, a crowd of people in the moonlight, and many heads of youngsters. Occasionally a chief would say, “Some one a cigarette or a light,” and a boy darted into the house through the dancers, plunged for the light, and returned with it to the great man who had asked.

When the taupos, big and good natured, had danced, we drowsily asked them to sit alongside of us, while the siva of the men went on. Between two, as I became more and more sleepy, I was fortunate in finding comfort and support from my first neighbour, against whose big shoulder I reclined, my arm supported upon the weight of her knees—all mine might have been thrown upon her massive form without apparent inconvenience. A gentle tap now and then, and a gentle alofa told me that I was all right, and could go to sleep while making believe to look on. But the girls, drowsy as they were, were appreciative of the men’s dances, and so was Seu, who called out over and over again, mālie (bravo) as if he had not seen thousands of sivas, which now, having become “missionary,” he does not attend. I knew that I was interested in the intervals of sleep, but all has faded into a sort of disconnected dream. I can only remember getting out into the bright moonlight, and that it made a silver haze outside during the dances. We had been obliged toward midnight to make a speech, with thanks, protesting the fatigue of travel as an excuse for not remaining. The Samoans will sit up all night, especially in their favourite moonlight: they can sleep during the day, and apparently always do so. Around our house, until we had blown out the light, and even for some time after, rows of people sat watching us in the light of the moon: the people sauntered about, or sat in the shade of the trees, with sharp-edged leaves that made the scene look, as usual, like the stage-setting of a fairy opera.

The next morning we were to leave for the next important place, Sapapali, the home of the Malietoa, the princes who have been for a long time the principal chiefs of these islands, and who are now represented by the present king. This is a rude definition; as I have told you elsewhere, the question of chiefhood and sovereignty here is one not easily represented or defined by our words. At Sapapali, the ancestral home, we should be received by Aigā, the King’s niece, and consequently a young person of the highest rank, indeed, I suppose the greatest lady of the land. With us this would be the Queen or the Royal Princess, or the heir to the throne. But here blood and descent are all and in the direct line. This young person was next to Malietoa as being of sufficient blood.

Our arrival was to happen about noon, so that, as in Samoan phrase, it was only about half an hour’s walk, we were to leave punctually at ten o’clock. Early rising took us again to the black pool surrounded by high trees, where two of us bathed, watched and escorted by two little damsels with whom the other one of us flirted. I myself was too much occupied with the difficult question of keeping on, while swimming, the fathom of cloth they call lavalava; and afterward of adjusting it in the water, after swimming for it when it had floated away, and then on coming out, receiving dry cloth with one hand and putting off the wet one. But I found out how one begins in the corner. Later in the morning it had grown hot, as we left pretty Iva, and made our way through broad or narrow roads, to Sapapali. The old difficulty again amused me; we could not walk in proper Samoan order; sometimes one of us, sometimes another was in front, while properly, all of us chiefs should have led, and the attendants followed at respectful distances. So that again Awoki would canter on in front of the chiefs: meanwhile Anai told us things of local information, pointing out where the road narrowed, the place where had stood in older times, a famous tree, a cocoanut. Among its branches the Malietoa, who first became converted later to Christianity, used to conceal himself and lasso or noose such pretty taupos or maidens as passing might strike his fancy. One of these had been the grandmother of the young lady whom we were going to visit. While the party talked the scandal over I remained a while by a deep well near the shore, and watched a handsome Samoan ride his horse barebacked to the water, to the sand and distant trees of a little promontory.

When I hurried forward, the party had gone far ahead, and had arrived before me. I crossed the rocky bed of a dry river, upon whose edge stood houses, and going up the hill before me, came upon a high open space with trees far scattered, and several large black tombs made of stones piled together in regular rectangular form; and in the centre of the green a house high-placed which instinct told me was the guest-house, our destination. Part of the mat curtains were down opposite the central posts: I entered by the open side, and saw Adams and the Consul seated next to a young woman in half European dress (that is to say with a corsage); and on the other side of her Seumanu and Anai. I entered and sat down with some hesitation next to the Consul, and after being presented to her ladyship looked about me. Opposite, the posts of the pretty house all adorned with flowers had each a chief, as a sort of sitting caryatid or buttress. And they were big and splendid; that was the Greek frieze of which I was telling you. Between each massive figure, of Ajax and Nestor and Ulysses and Agamemnon, appeared from time to time some little boy, whose small person made them look more ample, as the boys or angels of Michael Angelo’s Sistine Chapel make sibyls and prophets look more colossal by comparison. Then kava was brought in and made solemnly, when in stepped a woman and sat herself beside the kava attendant who dried the wisp. A moment later, and her presence was explained. She, it appears, had the hereditary right to “divide the kava,” and had come to claim it. When the heavy clapping of hands announced that the drink was ready, she called out the name of Aigā, to whom the first bowl was presented as to the greatest personage. Then to one of the guests, then to the next relative of the Malietoa, then to a guest, then to a chief, and so on, contrariwise to what we had seen before, where we as guests were helped first. You see we were at court, in the presence of royalty.

When the ceremonies were over, we chatted with Aigā, who spoke English, and whose amiability pleased me. She was embarrassed and shy, and struggled like some girl, unaccustomed to society, to say some proper things. But the grace of her diffidence was all the greater when one noticed the security of position indicated by her voice when speaking in a low distinct tone to others. At length we rose and adjourned to the neighbouring house, where the feast had been set forth. This we were allowed to dispense with under plea of a late breakfast, but for form’s sake we looked at each separate thing, spread out in a long line of Samoan good fare, on green banana leaves that stretched across the house. Then we papalagi, (foreigners), returned to a Western soup kindly prepared by Aigā, and our own bread and tea, and sardines, in which fare Aigā joined, and talked to us and we to her, all stretched at full length upon the mats.

Then our lady disappeared with some little show of embarrassment, and had I known how much it cost her, I should have sympathized with her sooner in the annoyance of her having to prepare her toilette for the great official reception (talolo), which was to be the next function of the afternoon—the nearest house was the scene of the dressing of herself and her maidens. Through the dropped mats of the openings, girls and women kept plunging in and out, carrying in dress mats, and beads and garlands of flowers, and entangled, complicated cinctures and belts of fruits and flowers, and woven bark—and bringing out the news of how the dresses looked to the loungers sitting at a distance outside. And once I saw carried in a fierce, cruel headgear that our lady was to wear; the great helmet of blond hair, set with sparkling mirrors and tall filaments, to be bound tight with silvery shells around an aching head.

Then we went out to sit and wait on the other side of our guest-house, in the shade toward the sea, while long shadows covered the great space, and the sun itself became veiled and lit the scene with a tempered light more like that of our northern summer. One might almost have imagined an afternoon in some favoured, more poetic point in our coast at home, say Newport on some exceptional evening. The great mālie spread out further than the reserved ground of any of our residences, and its edge dropped suddenly to the sea before us. Once or twice a thatched house stood on the verge of this rolling green, all carefully smoothed and weeded like a lawn. To the left and right were small groves like the wings of a theatre. Far off to one side curved the bay, with palm trees stepping gradually into the sunlight. The sea was blue and green before us, and faintly shining; far off in the haze of sunlight were Upolu and Apolima—spots of blue. Nothing broke this space to the furthest dim horizon, except where on the edge of the cliffs stood one hut through which shone the colour of the sea and the foliage of the tree overshadowing it.

Then our party came up and sat about us on the slope of the grass about the house, and from the groves about us came the sounds of the drum-beat and the call of war music. From behind the house, in a great circle, ran out in a sort of dance, our hostess in full gala costume: naked to the waist, kilted with costly mats held on by flower girdles—on her head the great military cap. She held a little toy club in her hand; on either side, with heavier strides, two of the giants, her attendant chiefs, dressed and undressed in the same way, repeated her movements. Some thirty paces behind her, two of her maidens followed these leaders, turning round in a great circle of dance, spreading out their arms, and the wide folds of their waist-cloths, and the lines of their garlands were flung out by

their motion. In and out of the little grove danced back and forth a crowd of armed men, who threw up their clubs and caught them again.

Right in the middle of the green before us, threading their path between the princess and her girls, crouching to the ground, crawled or ran, bending low, three men, all blackened, with green cinctures of leaves wound round their heads, and short tails of white bark hanging down out of their girdles. These were the king’s “murderers,” relics of a bygone time when savage chiefs, like European sovereigns, used licensed crime to rid themselves of enemies—or friends—against whom they could not wage open war.

These whom we saw were only on parade. All this served but to recall a former power and its historical descent. But the ancestors of these official murderers of hereditary ancestry had been actively employed. At the whispered word of the chief they tracked the destined victim, risking their lives in the attack, and plunged into him their peculiar weapon, the foto, the barb of the Sting Ray, which breaking in the wound and poisonous withal, meant inevitable death.

They were called, as I make out, Aitutagata (Devil people). The display lasted but a short time; hardly more than a few circlings by Aigā and her people, then on a sudden all seemed to come up about us, and the assemblage broke up into groups. Aigā bore with apparent confusion our compliments. She was anxious to get away.

There was something inextricably touching in the case of this bashful young person—indoctrinated with our ideas to some extent—apparently realizing how we looked upon the scene, how different her dress and actions from those of her white friends and sisters, and yet carrying it all out to suit her position of princess and hostess; what was due to us, and to the traditions of her race.

With evening came the need of change, and I wandered down to the unfinished church begun by the Malietoa, of whom I told you. The massive foundations of coral rock, against which the tide was washing, are finished, as well as part of the walls of the church. In front is a little island, planted with trees: to the left, at once rocks and high trees; on the right, the surf broke again in a little cove with houses and palm trees, standing high against the setting sun. Far off the point, the outline of Apolima, more than ever like a submerged volcano cone, and the long white line of the surf; and near me, almost under me, a dark moving space in the water, where the tide washed more uneasily, the submerged tomb of a woman called Siga (white), a former wife of Seumanu. There was something that made one dream, in this grave, now remembered, now forgotten, a reminder that all memory can

be but temporary, and that the real end is where all ends and is forgotten, and where, as the Spaniard says, “Dios empiezo.” I sat and sketched a little, seated on the great foundation. Children and women crowded around, and climbed up the space in front, where the great steps should have been, and filed all around the projecting edge that runs about the church. When I had done I rose, and turning the corner of the narrow ledge, found that I had made a group of frightened prisoners. Then I went to the deep pool near by, where the sea runs into the little fresh water, and was smiled at by the good-natured face, just being washed, of one of the murderers by inheritance, who had figured all blackened that afternoon, with green leaves and a white hanging tail. His wickedness was being washed off with his blacking: or rather, his wickedness was all archæological, kept up as a proof of the former dignity and power of the chief, and of the obedience of his men. For these people seem never to have been grossly wicked or cruel; as I told you, they were not cannibals or whatever they had that way, ages ago, was condemned as bad. They have even been unwilling to exterminate their enemies in their many wars: and when they could put an end to the German, in this last war, they stopped their killing the moment the enemy was beaten, as they imagined. An element of strong good nature seems to persist at the bottom of their character.

That evening we had a siva, like other sivas, which I am unable to describe, because I was so sleepy that my memory has not held over. I lurked in the dark, behind our hostess, who did not dance. Her missionary training and her position were against it, I suppose, but also, perhaps, she did not dance well, or as well as others. Afterward she lingered with us, in the late evening, as did the taupo who had danced. With them were her two girls, attendants, and one or two of the elder women, along with some of our men who acted as chorus. Then “quelque diable le poussant,” nothing would do for one of our own party but that he should tease and beg for a dance with more undressing. The older women seemed to enjoy the notion, which reminded them, perhaps, of old days when they were able to be naughty, and had performed all sorts of antics late at night, when the elders and the great people were gone to bed. So gradually, from one dance to another, we came to one in which the performers disrobe entirely for a moment, using some words that represent and lay claim to the same beauty which the Venus of Naples, she whom we call Venus Callipyge, attempts to look at, and certainly shows. But it was all innocent and childish—the taupo danced it, and the young girls accompanied her with one older woman—and Aigā laughed and was amused, but hid away behind us, ashamed. Then we made her dance for

a moment the usual dance, I say we, but it was not I—and as she seemed to think that even that was dreadful enough—we parted with some discomfort. I foresaw trouble, but whether our fair friend was not as much annoyed by the relentless compliments paid to the beauty of others, is more than I can make out, being a man.

In the morning we trotted off a few miles, to this present place Sapotulafai, the headquarters of the great orator, and which is the great political centre. We had a great dinner, at which I sat next to the taupo of the adjacent village, a giantess, whose name is not insignificant, though people here are not apparently named, any more than are people anywhere else, by name to suit them. Charlie interpreted her name for me saying, “When you are on top of a cocoanut, and the wind blows hard, and you are afraid of falling off, that is Lilia.” You have seen a palm tree in a gale, and you can imagine the picturesqueness of this definition of fear, in the wild swinging of the waves of the branches.

We had a siva in the afternoon, when a young chief danced with the taupo of his village, to whom he is engaged: She gave him some occasional affectionate whacks of reproof at some remarks that distance did not make clear; and we had a great “talolo” with the speech of the great tulafale of Samoa, and then a return speech, which was listened to with some curiosity. Some devil inspired me to urge our representative speech-maker to discuss the severe and mistaken view of dancing taken up by the missionaries—I mean the brown clergy. They had done all sorts of good, but they were crowding too much out in their zeal, and the white missionaries were not so excessive—and so forth. And Adams had made a remark that seems to me a deep one. Something more is needed for these people of few occupations. If they are to live to-day they are destined to a putting aside of the excitement of their little wars, and they need some outlet in games that exercise them, and keep up their appreciation of physical life and excellence. Anyhow, these views were launched out at a risk, and in a few days, without a doubt, will have gone all around Samoa.

My own reason was a nearer one. It grieved me to think that Aigā should risk her church position, because she was polite according to Samoan etiquette, and that the other girls, who did the same, to wit, gave us dances, at the request of their fathers and superiors, should be placed between divided duties. This had been an oppression to the mind ever since we came; and perhaps after all, we may have done well.

In the evening, our own taupo, Faauli the daughter of the orator, gave us a siva; she danced, and danced well, and so did Lilia, the daughter of a great chief, a Catholic, and then we had the other taupo, who danced again with the young chief to whom she was engaged. His dance was certainly amusing to the imagination. The chorus was singing about himself, in his honour, and he performed the steps, if I may so express it. He and another with red girdles and black, furry loin-cloths, and red leaves in the hair, and red bead necklaces, danced with the taupo herself, dressed all in red and purple leaves. The dances were a dance of the hammer, and the dance of the cocoanut, and in the glitter of the palm-fire, the ballet of our fairy opera. And satiated with dances I have tried to be quiet and to sketch until now.

Oct. 30th.

We shall leave to-morrow. I feel tired, a little saddened; I suspect that sleeping on the floors at night, in draughts from the back-country, and wandering occasionally, in the midday, among the hot thickets, may have given me some little fever. The German manager of one of the plantations was telling me a little while ago that there was danger in this, though nothing like what he had seen in other countries. On that account, he had lifted the flooring of the houses, built for his men, Solomon or Marshall islanders, whose health was of course of importance to him, during their contract time. After all this care, they will be taken back, perhaps, to the wrong place, and I suppose, eaten by their fellows, if they happen to land on the wrong spot, or at some neighbouring village.

This afternoon we went to Sapapali, to take leave of Aigā who had been so kind to us, and who seemed almost hurt at our not remaining. We found her apparently sad and troubled, and I regretted that we had been accompanied by the other Taupos of our locality. Not that they were not kept in their places by the greater lady, for this rather timid and amiable person knows perfectly well how to speak to people who are socially below her, and nothing has interested me more than her various shades of inflection in addressing others. But something has evidently annoyed her, whether the break with the church on account of the siva, or her girls having been indiscreet, or her having made some mistake that I do not exactly understand. She was much teased by one of us about some “tendresse de cœur,” and that may have annoyed her. And the praise given to her little girls, and an attempt to get them away from her control may not have been pleasant. When I had seen the rest of the company pass by my sketching place, and I knew that the visit was over, I went back alone to her house and found her among her girls prostrate and in tears. But she came out to me, so as to be alone, and she spoke as if we should misjudge her from Sunday-school views and not understand that her parade at the head of her warriors, all undressed, was an official duty to us. And then bade me sweetly good-bye—and but a moment ago my curtain mats have been pushed aside by a messenger who has come all this way at night to bring me flowers from her.

So that I am not in cause: I leave it to you to read. I feel almost as if what I were writing to you were indiscreet enough. Remember that there is little privacy here, and that the houses are half open, so that one may almost rush in. In fact, were it not for the complication of human nature, I cannot see how there could be any privacy. There is privacy somehow or other, but not in our way. Outside the house there may be ways of saying things, inside and out there are dictionaries of signs, but they all have the most wonderful way of hearing, and there are always eyes everywhere. I have remarked that since I have cultivated the habit of sitting on the ground, I see more of everything, and I seem to be able to watch more easily. But, as I said, privacy is relative: nothing has struck me as more Samoan than an elopement which I almost witnessed. The young woman ran away with some young man, along the beach, in the presence of hundreds of people who, it is true, were not exactly watching her. She was just as publicly caught and brought back, cuffed sufficiently and scolded by her older sister, and I see her occasionally, in a neighbour’s house, looking not so repentant as on the first afternoon of her punishment. As I said, I am tired and sad—and I wish you good-night across the ocean and land.

At Home in Vaiala,
Nov. 4th.

The end of our malaga was not so pleasant. When we left Sapotulafai last week, I was ill and fevered, and suffered quite a little during our long trip of fourteen hours at sea. We had to row it. There was no wind, and our men, never over-energetic, had been up all night in the last enjoyment of social delights. Once indeed, Seu scornfully took an oar, but even with that, twelve good hours’ rowing is not bad work, and we got back in the evening at eight, having left Savaii at six o’clock in the morning. The light and colour were as usual: even with fever I could occasionally see how beautiful all was, but I managed to sleep, and do not remember anything in particular, unless it be the long-continued song of the men rowing——

Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 13th.

Yesterday, on Faatulia’s invitation, we rode over to the Papa-seea, the Sliding Rock: only a little distance, some hour and a half from where we are, so that by eight o’clock or so we were out in the rain, mounted on the horses seared up with difficulty for the early start. Mine was a horse owned by the boy Poki, who is an owner of horses—he has now three, and his food for them is given by the village common. His still more youthful friend, Sopo, hired his horse to Atamo and somebody else fitted out Awoki and Charley who went with us. Samau, the tulafale, and another of our crew were to go ahead and carry some European food and our painting and photographing kit. As we passed along the beach, which is, as you know, the street of Apia, we met Meli Hamilton and Faatulia and Fanua, and little Meli Meredith, all mounted. Gathering them together, under rather a gentle rain, we turned toward the woods behind the town and cantered over a dyke, through a mangrove swamp, where formerly must have been some coral inlet; then past some villages, a few huts, and then into the forest. This is no description to you, but perhaps I can interest you by letting you understand that the delicate form of the great novelist, Mr. Stevenson, passes up or down this road, of necessity, on his way to his Spanish Castle in the mountains. So that when he begins to write South Sea stories, and is obliged to use local colour, you shall probably admire some beautiful description of all or part of the road.

In the woods we overtook our men, and dear Fagalo and Sué, whose bare legs were paddling in the rain. A little path led through woods all overgrown, in a narrow zigzag, over fallen trunks and under branches beneath which we bent. The light fell through green high up, upon green all around us; innumerable small trees and bushes, and occasionally great trees whose trunks ended in high buttresses of rooting sharp and thin, as if the trunk had been ravined. These are the trees which in the old story-books of travel were supposed to furnish a ready-made planking. Over all grew lianas and vines whose great long stems hung in the air above us, or low enough to be pushed aside as we rode. Notwithstanding the several varieties of growth—the Samoan wild orange with double leaf and prickly stem, whose fruit was used in old times as a soap to wash with, or the Fuafua, with broad leaves—the effect was not unlike the appearance of our own forests, had it not been for the lianas, and the occasional sheafs of wild banana that swung against our horses’ heads. For an hour we went along in a scattered file, the sunlight occasionally dropping in upon the great stillness around us. Rarely a bird sung. Once we heard the running of a river. Then we came to a stopping place; all got off; the girls

skilfully ungirthing and unsaddling their horses, and tying them up to the branches with long ropes. Over the trees that sloped down below us, we could now see the harbour of Apia, from one end to the other, and we kindled a fire of dead wood, to show the anxious friends at our end of the bay that we had arrived. There are three waterfalls in this little opening to which our narrow path had led us, and it leads no further and nowhere else. Of the three falls, each divided from the others by wide platforms of rock, the upper one is low and does not count. It is the second and the third that are “slipping rocks.” The water rushes over them in one or many falls, according to the season, and in some of the channels the surface has become so slippery with moss that all one has to do is to sit and be whirled into the pool below. We had just begun to look down into the little hollow, edged on one side by a high rock upon which ferns and vines and green bananas find a scanty foothold, when Fagalo, throwing off her upper covering, seated herself on the edge of the current, and in an instant had slipped off. And a laugh from below echoed above as she rose from the pool and swam to the shore. By the time that we had clambered down to meet her, she had come up and rushed down again followed by Sué. The sight was charming: the pretty girls, with arms thrown out and bodies straight for balance, their wet clothes driven tightly to the hips in the rush of the water, had a look of gold against the gray that brought up Clarence King’s phrase about Hawaii and the “old-gold girls that tumbled down waterfalls.” In the plunge and the white foam, the yellow limbs did indeed look like goldfish in a blue-green pool. Further down there is a small rush of water into a little hollow in the rock; the two girls in their play filled it easily, like mermaids in too small a tank. Then we had lunch on banana leaves, to which our wet friends contributed the shrimps that they had caught, accidently as it were, and without thinking, in these moments of “abandon.” We had also a mess of palolo looking like very dark green spinach, darker than the green leaves in which it was wrapped. Adams insisted that this dish tasted quite like “foie gras,” which he also said was quite as nasty a preparation.

To explain what palolo is I should have told you of a little expedition we made one morning last week, just on the return from our malaga. But I was ill and had suffered too much from native food to write any more upon similar subjects. Even all my liking for Meli Hamilton and my admiration for the fullness and redness of her lips, and for the gleam of her teeth, could scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling of the great tree worms through which she crunched so gayly and healthily at our last great Samoan dinner.

At the waterfall, after our lunch, our men had theirs, and they sat with heads all wrapped about with leaves, while the rain came down upon them; for if there is anything that a Samoan detests it is getting his hair wet. The rest of him does not matter. Meanwhile we smoked under our umbrellas, pretty Meli Meredith half under mine, and Meli Hamilton under a big banana leaf. For most of the others rain did not matter. They had either gone into the water or were preparing to do so by sitting quietly in the current. Otaota had prepared for the slide, and was stretched out in the run of the waterfall that now swept over, now left uncovered her extended limbs; for she leaned out upon one elbow, and dipped a hand in the water, scattering it upon the other girls in a lazy way. Otaota was “missionary” that day, and would not uncover the lovely torso about which I have told you so much. Then the sun came out in a lingering, gentle way, as if it dripped down from the sky, and with it all the girls went over; Fanua and Meli Meredith and Otaota. And as we looked down upon them, they swam over and hid behind the branchings of the vines like so many nymphs of streams, their faces and arms glancing like gold out of the green. Near them one of our men made a deep red in the water by contrast. And now Awoki, with much hesitation, prepared, put on the native lavalava, and tried his luck. Yellow he is to us, but he looked white and pallid among all those browns and reds.

The whole thing was catching, and had we stayed longer we too should have been over, though Adams said that just then our dignity forbade it. But our feeling of dignity had been helped by Meli Hamilton’s telling us that the last time she had gone over the fall, she had struck badly against a rock, and so had her companion, the navy officer; so that with the rain beginning again, horses were bridled and saddled, and we all started for a wet ride in the wet woods, down the slippery path which we had to take in single file. Fagalo rode with Charley, on Sopo’s little nag, and the last thing I saw of Otaota was her bare legs over the back of Awoki’s horse; he sat behind, his arms around her, gallantly protecting all that remained of her with his little waterproof. And we came home tired and wet, but having spent a pleasant childlike day with grown-up children.

PALOLO

Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 14th.

I broke off yesterday telling you about palolo. I think my words ended by telling you that even all my liking and admiration for Meli Hamilton would scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling of the great tree worms which she crunched at our

last Samoan dinner. Mrs. Lieutenant Parker became very white as she saw her and I handed her rapidly something or other, brandy or whiskey, to help the occasion.

Palolo has no such horrors. For it we have not had far to go. Only just out into the reefs before us, when, in the early morning before the dawn, we rowed out a few yards to find a concourse of people, in boats and canoes, scooping up with eager hands thin hairlike worms that swarmed in the water within the special hollows of the coral reef.

We were more or less ready for the appearance of these little creatures who, on a certain day of the year and the moon, appear suddenly with the dawn and disappear with the sunrise until another year. We were expecting this arrival, which never fails. As I said, it is looked for ahead; it has its own laws; the scientific ones fail because we have calculated by our dates, instituted for other reasons than the life of the palolo. Our Samoan friends are in the secret. We white people compute that the palolo is due at dead low water in the night of the third quarter of the moon nearest the first of November, but that reckoning involves Solar and Lunar months, as I intimated.

Our good friends here have been whispering to us and telling us that this was to happen and they know how to be prepared for it. Certain plants, certain shrubs blossom; and then you know that the time of the palolo’s month is drawing near. There are signs in the heavens, and the moon helps. It is, I think, in its third quarter that the event takes place. Somebody with us, perhaps several people (because our village contains important and learned people) mark time during the year by counting pebbles, and green feathers, and leaves, up to such and such a day, so that, at a certain moment, our friends can tell us that the palolo is due next morning.

The third year one has to count a different number of days, but the creatures down below in the coral know exactly to the minute. The night is watched through, our people are all ready, are warned at the proper moment. People from far away are also ready. Our friends have found each one some proper hole which may be more or less lucky later. We watched the dawn coming upon us, lighting the breakers on the edge of the reef. When the breakers withdraw it is slack tide and we watch, and our friends watch, more intently than we can, the absolute calm of the water. Then, of a sudden, somebody calls out, “the palolo is there!” or something like it, and then this empty water is full of long lines of what seems to be worms, which you scoop up, not so anxiously as those who care.

A short time, an hour they say but it seemed to me shorter, the sun is up over the edge and the worm is gone until next year.

It is nothing but something like the thinnest of little seaweed a few inches long, and you have to accept as a fact that this wriggling mass is made up of worms.

I wish I could fairly describe the place and scene but you can make it up for yourself. The scene is one of busy struggle. It is a matter of food, it is true, also a festival of amusement apart from the picnic side. Very interesting was the eagerness shown in the catching, by the few white girls born here, whom I watched. They paddled about, jumped out with bare feet on to the jagged coral like any Polynesian, but with that seriousness and ferocity of our race, so different from the easy good-natured suppleness of the brown skins who seem to be part of the nature around them.

The dark transparent water inside the reefs, the rosy colouring of the dawn, the splendour of the sunrise which is at length over land and water, would have been beautiful enough even without this animation of human element. But I have not dared taste the palolo even as made up yesterday with cocoanut milk. I have come to the point of a revolt against almost all of the food, from cocoanut milk to live fish and slugs.

Vaiala in Upolu, Sunday, Nov. 23, 1890.

The end of the last week has been filled with festivity. Seu has been giving a great feast, and this has been a very serious matter. We have seen other feasts before, but none so successful and so great. The presents given to Seu and Faatulia, or rather to Vao, their little daughter, in whose name the feast was given, were larger in number than we had yet heard of. Among vast quantities of other things were hecatombs of pigs—in prose fact, three hundred and twenty-five—over two thousand rolls of tappa, and several dozen of “fine mats.” All the neighbouring houses were in requisition for the guests, who kept coming from various quarters during the whole week, and especially from Savaii, where is the stronghold of Faatulia’s family. Faatulia wore the anxious look of the hostess on her kindly face, and Seu looked worried, a thing I should have thought impossible. But as I go on you will see how serious it all is, however gratifying it may be to pride of position. The house of Seu was charmingly decorated with tappa, even to the floor, so as to remind me, but I own, more pleasantly, of our most æsthetic studios. In others, there were few European visitors, and more packing of Samoans. In one other especially, I think loaned by the King, a collection of taupos from various localities filled the space by the posts, so as to make the hut look like a basket of flowers. Far in the central penumbra, two female giants sat all decorated, and around them the backs and waists of the others looked like a garden of dahlias and brown skin. For some were “faa Samoa”—others were more or less “papalagi” foreigners. In that case, however, their waist coverings were amusing. Some had corselets of leaves lapping over like Etruscan or Greek plate armour. Others had coloured netting, others had tappa cut out with various openings, like some heathen dream of “insertions” (I think women call it so). One girl had a corselet of cut paper of many colours, making her look like a flower-bed, her oiling giving to the paper a look of leafage. There were dresses of the usual variety and in one case a large number of flower petals caught up one by one in the locks of the hair. In another the whole hair had been filled with little light blue bits of paper cut like petals. Mind you, all this was beautiful, funny as it was, and upon the green grass background, made, as I said, a basket of flowers. The brown skins that were not covered glowed like fruit. In perfect taste, for even garlands are gawky compared to the ineffable logic that the human frame carries with it, one good girl had no covering to her body, and this savage from the farther back country had a face that looked like the Italians’. In the shadow, playing with a bambino, she made a madonna. The reason of it came to me suddenly—her hair was down upon the forehead in the two large folds that we associate with the Italian way, and a great look of seriousness was added to the disdainful kindness of the face. Behind her head the hair was full, in a mass whose colour was blond with liming, and made a great capital for the column of her torso seen with arms hidden in front. Of her I have made some studies, and posed her for photographs, and later, on the next night, she gave us a siva in our own house; Adams and I having duly called upon her, as if we were young men, with five loaves of bread, and two tins of salmon, as is the proper thing for youthful admirers like ourselves.

Around this beehive of yellow and black were assembled matrons and children and boys, waiting for the later food, of which they as relatives would have the larger part.

Far off, in another part of the grounds, Lima, known as John Adams, presided over the food; and in front of him a vast mass of pigs and bananas and taro, etc., etc., littered the ground. John told us about it in a high-pitched voice, with an accent that brought back indefinable associations. Whom did I know of the old school with such perfect intonation in English, and a diction that implied the gentleman by accepted tradition? Could it have been some old officer of the navy—could it have been some far-back Englishman or antique Southerner? But John, even in his exterior manner, brought back all the feeling that we do not speak English as well to-day as once was done, and that our refinement of manner and accent has disappeared.

The feast had begun; under long stretches of tappa supported by poles, guests were assembled around the tables of banana leaf, while we wandered about, made prudent by former disasters in diet. It was pleasant to see the triumphant carrying of great pigs by the young men, garlanded and cinctured: the platforms of sugar-cane and taro disposed in a show, as if growing in some impossible yet graceful way—the taro like grapes on a vine.

Then we wandered back to our taupos in their home. They were feasting in a circle around the banana trays. Two men were hewing the pigs into segments, with the swish so well described by my Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tseu, in his chapter of the “Rising Clouds”—if that be the one. Two older women stalked about amid the food, who caught these chunks of meat and tossed them to the taupos. Occasionally they varied this by assorted lots of taro or cooked food. Do not suppose by this that these vigorous maidens were bolting their food. No, all this was Samoan and communistic; no one lives for himself here, but for the lot. These good girls were hard at work, passing all this to old women with baskets, and two young people who sat on the edge of the hut with feet outside, impatiently urged them. “Wait,” they said, “wait; our turn in a moment,” and amid laughter and chattering and long reproofs of the old women, the food came to them in turn. I suppose the taupos managed to get something, but if they did, they deserved it for the work they had in passing the food away. This is Samoa—where a gift is shared or given away. When we called later on one of the taupos, as I told you, and carried our little gifts, half of them were at once given to the owners of the house, and the other half to some chief who happened to be present. All this as a matter of course, with fair counting, as in a commercial firm. Even the cigar accepted by the fair one, passed in a few seconds to her nearest neighbour. Some one was telling me yesterday, of having given a cigar a few days ago to a Samoan, who had just bitten it, when another passing asked for it. Thereupon it was handed away, as a matter of course. “Why did you give that?” the white man said.

“Because he asked,” said the Samoan.

“But is there no further reason?”

“Yes; I might some day want a cigar, and if he had one, I should ask.” The community of friends and relatives is a sort of bank where you deposit and draw as you may need. So for Seu’s food: almost all is given to him. It is given out, sent away if people are not there; a procession of people carrying things from the feast, filed along all the afternoon.

After the feast, a siva in the open air, where Fanua danced. The crowd was full all about her and her assistants, girls and men. The occasion was a notable one. Two white missionaries with their wives were present, and the siva was danced before them. Henceforward the excommunication will be difficult, unless the native preachers insist upon having their own way. But we shall have been present at this great event. I spoke to one of the missionaries for a moment, a rather interesting man, who talked a little about his hopes for the Samoans, their conservatism, and their not being emotional, however excitable they might appear to be, so that things once impressed upon them had a fair chance of thriving.

And thereupon we proceeded (those of us who were tired) to get away—not without, however, looking once more at another siva getting under way, with some of the many taupos and their male assistant dancers, to see them oil. Some one ran around offering the liquid, which was poured full upon everything, dress and person. And being introduced, I shook the oily palms of some of the girls and of one splendid chief—who might have been drier. Then, later, Adams and I called on our taupo friend, whose home we proposed to drop into next week in our travels, and who is visiting near us. We arranged with Meli Hamilton as our tulafale for a siva in our own house. There at night the taupo came, in the pouring rain, and I sat in my own comfortable chair, with Mrs. Parker next to me, and felt at home; for in the shadow I could close my eyes or look on while the figures danced in shadow or in light.

The next day we were summoned again to Seu’s feast. A siva would be danced for us papalagi who had been too crowded the day before. So that we went to see the comedy, which began seriously enough. We sat a while in Seumanu’s house, filled with friends and relatives, while a woman, an ex-taupo, carefully unfolded the presents of “fine mats,” saying what they were for, and from whom, and occasionally something of their history. For the “fine mat” is the great possession—the heirloom, the old silver, the jewels of the Samoan. And one tattered piece that was held up for show, sewed together, its trimming of feathers all gone, and full of holes, was looked at with respect; it had been royal. Around these mats cluster romance and story—war and quarrels—and the idea of the palladium, the insignia of power. The mat has been given at marriage and at birth, and has been worn on great occasions—it has witnessed those scenes, and besides carries money value. Its very stains tell stories of those events in life. So that Seu’s thirty odd mats were quite an affair, exclusive of the pile of two thousand pieces of tappa. As soon as the mats had been counted over, and admired, and a polite discussion arose, our hostess insisting that it must be a bore for us to look over all this, the polite guests insisting that nothing could be more entertaining.

Then John Adams (Lima), in his fine old-fashioned voice and way, cried out that if we wished, a siva was getting ready in the next house, and as our adviser whispered to us that we had better be away, for that now the real work had begun. It was for Seu and Faatulia and the family group to decide as to who should be the people to whom all these gifts were to be made over. A few they might keep, but the mass must go. Every giver had a right to something, if possible finer than his gift: and here was a ploy, as Sir Walter says. Everything must be according to dignity and family and precedence, and everything that society means everywhere. Think of the heart-burnings, jealousies, affronts, etc., that hung in the balance. Many a time in Samoa, war has begun by some error in such adjustments. No wonder that we were better out of the way. Even to-day, we are told that several days more, a whole week, will be consumed in these weighty questions, and Seu is to wear his look of worry for days.

Adams and I sat on branches: I, on the right, Adams, on the left of her Majesty the Queen, while a siva of two pretty children, little taupos, daughters of a chief of Savaii, and of two young men, went on before us in the sweet light, half sunlight and half rain. These two little girls, Selu’s daughter and her little friend, the daughter of a chief of Iva, gave us an infantile imitation, while another chief played buffoon, to give them courage and protect them from serious attention. And this time Fanua sat behind us, and looked on, alongside of many young girls and women whom we have learned to know a little.

Up to this time, the terrible ordeal of decision of presents must have gone on, and will not be through until late next week, when we hope to get Seumanu on another malaga; but this time at our own pleasure, and with the hope of making sketches and studies with more leisure, and with a better knowledge, for as you know, he who runs finds it difficult to read, and there is nothing that I abhor more than the carrying of the studio sight into other visions.

Only the poet is free, whether he be painter or writer, for with him subjects are only excuses, and as Fromentin has put it so perfectly, Delacroix’s three months of Morocco contain all that has been said and will be said of the east and south of the Mediterranean. But we cannot all be great people like Delacroix, nor great painters like him, nor perhaps was he at all aware in early life of his always having achieved. But he tried probably, to be exact and faithful, as any one of us might do.

The weather is again beautiful; to-day is all blue and triumphant; indeed, the sky is bluer than it was, although the grass is yellower, and in the afternoon late, the clouds of the horizon are radiant in violet and rose. Fanua has come up to see me, with the Queen’s little daughter all clad in pink, who has been living in Fiji, and talks English quite well, and says like a child, that she likes Fiji better than Samoa. Service at the little church opposite is just over, where Fanua has been, and where I have heard the voice of Otaota’s father preaching. He has called upon me, apparently interested in questioning about the Mormons, who have sent missionaries here, and whose wives often canter past, against the blue background of the sea. Otaota’s father is not a little proud of his preaching, which indeed sounds well out of the church windows, and he asks me why I don’t come in to listen more closely. His parishioners sit on mats, and I sometimes lend some of mine to stray visitors, especially to members of our crew. The men sit on one side, the women on the other: and files of women, especially, walk along with mats under their arms or over their heads, or held in front of them; and occasionally a child is carried outside on the hip.

There is a small post near by, upon which is a small bell, and a ladder to get to it, all under a tree, and some young girl or boy rings the clapper with great zeal. I have made a sketch of one of them who accidently set about a missionary work, without putting on her tiputa, to cover her bosom, and who was worried as I sketched her, between the propriety of carrying out her “missionary work” and her want of missionary propriety.

Fanua has left, after sending for the child of a neighbour and caressing it during part of our supposed conversation. They say that she is thinking of marrying, and certainly she will make a nice wife and mother if one can judge by looking at her. Is there anything sweeter than a woman caressing a child? and how fond these Samoans are of children. They swarm about as free as birds, rarely checked; the owner of our house, the chief Magogi, looks more good-natured and smiling than ever, when after his fishing, and leaving a fish with us, he parades about with his child in his arms. Like a woman, he even carries him when he is attending to something else. And Tofae is as gentle to little George (the son of the late English Consul, and of Tāelē) whom he has adopted, as if he were a mother. When he and other chiefs, in the afternoon, sit about on the grass, far interspersed, some ten or twenty feet from each other, in Samoan fashion, little George creeps up and nestles against him, making with him the only group in the big circle.

Fanua has gone, and from Mataafa’s house begins a hymn. I recognize the ancient sound of the Ave Maria Stella (for Mataafa is a Catholic)—another version of the Vallis Lachrymarum that Otaota’s father was urging on his people an hour ago: “It is morning and you dance—but night is coming and then——” The Samoan smile is proof against anything—but Mataafa is grave and somewhat sad, and must take things on a scale far different. The mournful dignity of his position—a king is always a king, and he has been a real one—of highest birth and greatest capacity—must always oppress him. And he has no future, I fear, for his holding power might be against the interests of Germany, to which England will always accede as a bargain, and to which we will yield, for we don’t care, and we are not yet aware of our enormous strength, to be used for ill or for good, and we sell it willingly for anything.

The former German ruler here knew all about it, for the Germans have every power of measuring us, and he said to our representative:

“You are really weak—like all Republicans—always at the mercy of little home events, and any one of you will trade for some personal advantage. You can have no policy, that any one of you in politics would not break through, to play a trick on the political adversary; and then you have no fleet nor army, to show to others what you could do. Before you can make up your mind to anything we shall have taken Samoa for ourselves.”

God willed it otherwise, but the German had measured us, at least as we are to-day.

The moon is almost full, and comes up in the night, while the sun is still lighting the sky with pink. Around her a single cloud is greenish white, while the entire sky is suffused with rose. The breakers are rosy white; the sea is of a daylight blue, the furthest distance is lit up, and a rose-coloured cloud hangs on the horizon far below the moon, while her wake cuts in silver across the sunlit sea and surf.

The western sky is all afire, and against it, when the eye is protected, the shadows of the moonlight fall with extreme clearness and precision. The beauty is ineffable; a little sarcasm comes up into my mind—a reminiscence of the theatre, of a too perfect arrangement, in which the machinist has combined too much together, the sun and the moon both equally splendid—night together with day. I am sure that no one would believe it if painted, and most would know it was incorrect. This disturbs my peace—but only a little. The good that comes from seeing through our teachers, is that at length we have no more use for them, and the remainder of life is more economical. And indeed, the world about me here seems to say, “See with how little we can be rich!”

Another Samoan Malaga, Nov. 30th.

Fagaloa Bay, on the N. E. side of Upolu.

We are on another malaga. I have not quite recovered from illness, so that the trip is not all enjoyment, and I write to you in some dejection and with an effort. We are going around the island, some hundred miles, in our two boats; our own managed by Samau, the tulafale, as coxswain, with four men to carry provisions, etc., and plenty of luggage and food for all of us; and Seumanu’s boat with ten rowers. We left the day before yesterday, in the early dove-coloured morning, all grey with partial rain, the mountains covered at top, and low down in the gorges, the mist and smoke from villages rising up in straight lines that looked like enormous waterfalls. Our first landing was at Falefä, where a river falls over wide rocks in its way to the sea, not so differently from other pretty waterfalls, except that it makes a broad spread of water that joins the sea, so that from some points one might imagine that the ocean runs in to meet it.

And then behind the frame of the wide fall and its bordering trees, one sees the mountains of the dim interior. There we rested at midday, and I lay on the mats, ill and tired, while Charley explained to the young woman of the house, wife of the native teacher, the meaning of a large sheet of the spring fashions of this year, which she had pinned up, with many other pictures from newspapers, upon the screen that divided the house. Her husband was away, attending the great meeting or Fono at Malua, the missionary school, where the toleration or rejection of the siva has been, or is being discussed. I am told now that the native clergy have held their own; and that though not reproving their white brethren, they have not quite concurred in a full freedom of toleration, but have arranged some middle term by which the question will be always limited to individual cases.

Later in the afternoon I sketched at the waterfall, in that curious silence filled with the sustained sound of rushing water, that belongs to such places, within which a faint, sharper thrill was the gliding of the surf upon the beach behind it. The place was shaded in its own shade, thrown over it by the hills that enclose and make it. Here and there, the sun caught the roll of the water, and the distant valley and mountains behind it were all floating in hot light and moisture that came down in great gusts with wafts of heat.

In the evening we came into this beautiful bay with high mountains on either side, and fringes of lower land. The bay, as its name indicates, is a very long one, running far inland. The site we are in is charming, the great mountains right behind us, and from their lower sides, long waterfalls creep down the cliffs and glisten through the top branches of the palms. Around us all is covered with trees. I have lounged and slept as much as possible. Atamo has begun to paddle a canoe, taking out the taupo with him. She has been very nice to us, doing her best with food, and seeing us to bed, and being in early to see us get up, and doing her duty generally and pleasantly. And she has given us sivas. We had met her before at Seu’s feast; we felt mutual good will, so that she was prepared. Her devotion to Atamo is great, and as I said, she has done her best by our food, which we managed this time with Awoki’s help. Through her eyes we saw one evening the resemblance of the light carried on the reef by the phantom of the lady who appears when night fishing goes on. You may remember, how she (as do others of the dead, or certain spirits perhaps—they are all confused in the Polynesian mind) fishes silently in the crowd of the canoes, or alongside of some single occupant—and then suddenly, when detected or suspected, disappears with the dawn that clears all our doubts away. Of this apparition some here say that she has her own canoe apart, just out of reach—some say that she walks on the water—but when she is followed, she makes for the shore, then is lost in the trees, and soon her lantern is seen going far up into the trackless mountain. There no one likes to follow at night. The dark for the Polynesian has terrors uncertain, natural enough, for the dark here is uncanny, and when plunged in its terrors the brown man does not like to add a definite influence or a name of ill omen. The belief in what might be called a lower supernatural is still strong: Christianity does well enough for the great needs, but something else is wanted for the smaller fears and dangers—the things about us at every moment; and it has interested us to draw out the small beliefs of this unimaginative and very practical race, who on one side are so much christianized. I wish that I could recall for you the scene in which we heard this story. The hollow silence between the mountain in the night—the water dark before us between darker trees. The dark shadows of the mountains, across the bay—the long glistening line of reflected starlight rolled up with a splash upon the beach that broke the quiet shiver of the palms. And then the one light, far out on the reef which caught the look of our maiden and drew the legend from her. I regret so much that my constant fatigue prevents my noting some of all this for you, and that I give you, too, no better description of what I see. The place is well worth some talk—even if it were nothing but a memorandum of the pretty talolo, or presentation of food, in which two or three dozen girls brought up the presents of taro and fruit, and threw them before us, filing out of the green trees, and disappearing again within them.