IN A CANNIBAL VALLEY


The road from Taahauku to Atuona skirted the north-westerly side of the anchorage‚ somewhat high up‚ edged‚ and sometimes shaded‚ by the splendid flowers of the flamboyant ­its English name I do not know.  At the turn of the land‚ Atuona came in view:  a long beach‚ a heavy and loud breach of surf‚ a shore-side village scattered among trees‚ and the guttered mountains drawing near on both sides above a narrow and rich ravine.  Its infamous repute perhaps affected me; but I thought it the loveliest‚ and by far the most ominous and gloomy‚ spot on earth.  Beautiful it surely was; and even more salubrious.  The healthfulness of the whole group is amazing; that of Atuona almost in the nature of a miracle.  In Atuona‚ a village planted in a shore-side marsh‚ the houses standing everywhere intermingled with the pools of a taro-garden‚ we find every condition of tropical danger and discomfort; and yet there are not even mosquitoes ­not even the hateful day-fly of Nuka-hiva ­and fever‚ and its concomitant‚ the island fe’efe’e‚ are unknown.

This is the chief station of the French on the man-eating isle of Hiva-oa.  The sergeant of gendarmerie enjoys the style of the vice-resident, and hoists the French colours over a quite extensive compound.  A Chinaman, a waif from the plantation, keeps a restaurant in the rear quarters of the village; and the mission is well represented by the sisters’ school and Brother Michel’s church.  Father Orens, a wonderful octogenarian, his frame scarce bowed, the fire of his eye undimmed, has lived, and trembled, and suffered in this place since 1843.  Again and again, when Moipu had made coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods.  “A mouse that dwelt in a cat’s ear” had a more easy resting-place; and yet I have never seen a man that bore less mark of years.  He must show us the church, still decorated with the bishop’s artless ornaments of paper ­the last work of industrious old hands, and the last earthly amusement of a man that was much of a hero.  In the sacristy we must see his sacred vessels, and, in particular, a vestment which was a “vraie curiosité,” because it had been given by a gendarme.  To the Protestant there is always something embarrassing in the eagerness with which grown and holy men regard these trifles; but it was touching and pretty to see Orens, his aged eyes shining in his head, display his sacred treasures.

August 26. ­The vale behind the village, narrowing swiftly to a mere ravine, was choked with profitable trees.  A river gushed in the midst.  Overhead, the tall coco-palms made a primary covering; above that, from one wall of the mountain to another, the ravine was roofed with cloud; so that we moved below, amid teeming vegetation, in a covered house of heat.  On either hand, at every hundred yards, instead of the houseless, disembowelling paepaes of Nuka-hiva, populous houses turned out their inhabitants to cry “Kaoha!” to the passers-by.  The road, too, was busy:  strings of girls, fair and foul, as in less favoured countries; men bearing breadfruit; the sisters, with a little guard of pupils; a fellow bestriding a horse ­passed and greeted us continually; and now it was a Chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us “Good-day” in excellent English; and a little farther on it would be some natives who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast of mummy-apple, and entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tin case.  With all this fine plenty of men and fruit, death is at work here also.  The population, according to the highest estimate, does not exceed six hundred in the whole vale of Atuona; and yet, when I once chanced to put the question, Brother Michel counted up ten whom he knew to be sick beyond recovery.  It was here, too, that I could at last gratify my curiosity with the sight of a native house in the very article of dissolution.  It had fallen flat along the paepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains and the mites contended against it; what remained seemed sound enough, but much was gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects consumed the walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain ate into them like vitriol.

A little ahead of us, a young gentleman, very well tattooed, and dressed in a pair of white trousers and a flannel shirt, had been marching unconcernedly.  Of a sudden, without apparent cause, he turned back, took us in possession and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river’s edge.  There, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit down:  the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought us a cocoa-nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve:  the nut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious gift, and the stick ­in the simplicity of his vanity ­to harvest premature praise.  Only one section was yet carved, although the whole was pencil-marked in lengths; and when I proposed to buy it, Poni (for that was the artist’s name) recoiled in horror.  But I was not to be moved, and simply refused restitution, for I had long wondered why a people who displayed, in their tattooing, so great a gift of arabesque invention, should display it nowhere else.  Here, at last, I had found something of the same talent in another medium; and I held the incompleteness, in these days of world-wide brummagem, for a happy mark of authenticity.  Neither my reasons nor my purpose had I the means of making clear to Poni; I could only hold on to the stick, and bid the artist follow me to the gendarmerie, where I should find interpreters and money; but we gave him, in the meanwhile, a boat-call in return for his sandal-wood.  As he came behind us down the vale he sounded upon this continually.  And continually, from the wayside houses, there poured forth little groups of girls in crimson, or of men in white.  And to these must Poni pass the news of who the strangers were, of what they had been doing, of why it was that Poni had a boat-whistle; and of why he was now being haled to the vice-residency, uncertain whether to be punished or rewarded, uncertain whether he had lost a stick or made a bargain, but hopeful on the whole, and in the meanwhile highly consoled by the boat-whistle.  Whereupon he would tear himself away from this particular group of inquirers, and once more we would hear the shrill call in our wake.

August 27. ­I made a more extended circuit in the vale with Brother Michel.  We were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to these rude paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which I found myself no less agreeable than the scenes through which I passed.  We mounted at first by a steep grade along the summit of one of those twisted spurs that, from a distance, mark out provinces of sun and shade upon the mountain-side.  The ground fell away on either hand with an extreme declivity.  From either hand, out of profound ravines, mounted the song of falling water and the smoke of household fires.  Here and there the hills of foliage would divide, and our eye would plunge down upon one of these deep-nested habitations.  And still, high in front, arose the precipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemed that scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags of a human road where it seemed that not a goat could scramble.  And in truth, for all the labour that it cost, the road is regarded even by the Marquesans as impassable; they will not risk a horse on that, ascent; and those who lie to the westward come and go in their canoes.  I never knew a hill to lose so little on a near approach:  a consequence, I must suppose, of its surprising steepness.  When we turned about, I was amazed to behold so deep a view behind, and so high a shoulder of blue sea, crowned by the whale-like island of Motane.  And yet the wall of mountain had not visibly dwindled, and I could even have fancied, as I raised my eyes to measure it, that it loomed higher than before.

We struck now into covert paths, crossed and heard more near at hand the bickering of the streams, and tasted the coolness of those recesses where the houses stood.  The birds sang about us as we descended.  All along our path my guide was being hailed by voices:  “Mikaël ­Kaoha, Mikaël!” From the doorstep, from the cotton-patch, or out of the deep grove of island-chestnuts, these friendly cries arose, and were cheerily answered as we passed.  In a sharp angle of a glen, on a rushing brook and under fathoms of cool foliage, we struck a house upon a well-built paepae, the fire brightly burning under the popoi-shed against the evening meal; and here the cries became a chorus, and the house folk, running out, obliged us to dismount and breathe.  It seemed a numerous family:  we saw eight at least; and one of these honoured me with a particular attention.  This was the mother, a woman naked to the waist, of an aged countenance, but with hair still copious and black, and breasts still erect and youthful.  On our arrival I could see she remarked me, but, instead of offering any greeting, disappeared at once into the bush.  Thence she returned with two crimson flowers.  “Good-bye!” was her salutation, uttered not without coquetry; and as she said it she pressed the flowers into my hand ­“Good-bye!  I speak Inglis.”  It was from a whaler-man, who (she informed me) was “a plenty good chap,” that she had learned my language; and I could not but think how handsome she must have been in these times of her youth, and could not but guess that some memories of the dandy whaler-man prompted her attentions to myself.  Nor could I refrain from wondering what had befallen her lover; in the rain and mire of what sea-ports he had tramped since then; in what close and garish drinking-dens had found his pleasure; and in the ward of what infirmary dreamed his last of the Marquesas.  But she, the more fortunate, lived on in her green island.  The talk, in this lost house upon the mountains, ran chiefly upon Mapiao and his visits to the Casco:  the news of which had probably gone abroad by then to all the island, so that there was no paepae in Hiva-oa where they did not make the subject of excited comment.

Not much beyond we came upon a high place in the foot of the ravine.  Two roads divided it, and met in the midst.  Save for this intersection the amphitheatre was strangely perfect, and had a certain ruder air of things Roman.  Depths of foliage and the bulk of the mountain kept it in a grateful shadow.  On the benches several young folk sat clustered or apart.  One of these, a girl perhaps fourteen years of age, buxom and comely, caught the eye of Brother Michel.  Why was she not at school? ­she was done with school now.  What was she doing here? ­she lived here now.  Why so? ­no answer but a deepening blush.  There was no severity in Brother Michel’s manner; the girl’s own confusion told her story. “Elle a honte,” was the missionary’s comment, as we rode away.  Near by in the stream, a grown girl was bathing naked in a goyle between two stepping-stones; and it amused me to see with what alacrity and real alarm she bounded on her many-coloured under-clothes.  Even in these daughters of cannibals shame was eloquent.

It is in Hiva-oa, owing to the inveterate cannibalism of the natives, that local beliefs have been most rudely trodden underfoot.  It was here that three religious chiefs were set under a bridge, and the women of the valley made to defile over their heads upon the roadway:  the poor, dishonoured fellows sitting there (all observers agree) with streaming tears.  Not only was one road driven across the high place, but two roads intersected in its midst.  There is no reason to suppose that the last was done of purpose, and perhaps it was impossible entirely to avoid the numerous sacred places of the islands.  But these things are not done without result.  I have spoken already of the regard of Marquesans for the dead, making (as it does) so strange a contrast with their unconcern for death.  Early on this day’s ride, for instance, we encountered a petty chief, who inquired (of course) where we were going, and suggested by way of amendment:  “Why do you not rather show him the cemetery?” I saw it; it was but newly opened, the third within eight years.  They are great builders here in Hiva-oa; I saw in my ride paepaes that no European dry-stone mason could have equalled, the black volcanic stones were laid so justly, the corners were so precise, the levels so true; but the retaining-wall of the new graveyard stood apart, and seemed to be a work of love.  The sentiment of honour for the dead is therefore not extinct.  And yet observe the consequence of violently countering men’s opinions.  Of the four prisoners in Atuona gaol, three were of course thieves; the fourth was there for sacrilege.  He had levelled up a piece of the graveyard ­to give a feast upon, as he informed the court ­and declared he had no thought of doing wrong.  Why should he?  He had been forced at the point of the bayonet to destroy the sacred places of his own piety; when he had recoiled from the task, he had been jeered at for a superstitious fool.  And now it is supposed he will respect our European superstitions as by second nature.