Frederick O'Brien

“ The island of Fatu-hiva faded behind us, and raised Moho-Tani, the Isle of Barking Dogs, a small, but beautifully regular, islet, like a long emerald. No soul dwells there. The Moi-Atiu clan peopled it before a sorcerer dried up the water sources. A curse is upon it, and while the cocoanuts flourish and all is fair to the eye, it remains a shunned and haunted spot.
Tahuata, that lovely isle of the valley of Vait-hua, rose on our left, with the cape Te hope e te keko, a purple coast miles away, which as the dusk descended grew darker and was lost. ”

“ There is in the nature of every man, I firmly believe, a longing to see and know the strange places of the world. Life imprisons us all in its coil of circumstance, and the dreams of romance that color boyhood are forgotten, but they do not die. They stir at the sight of a white-sailed ship beating out to the wide sea; the smell of tarred rope on a blackened wharf, or the touch of the cool little breeze that rises when the stars come out will waken them again. Somewhere over the rim of the world lies romance, and every heart yearns to go and find it. ”

“ The bay of Atuona, narrow between high cliffs covered with cocoanut-trees, was the scene of my lessons. The tide came booming into this cove from the Bay of Traitors, often with bewildering force, and a day or two a month as gently as the waves at Waikiki. The river spread a broad mouth to drink the brine, and the white sand was over-run by the flowered vines that crept seaward to taste the salt. No house was in sight, no man-made structure to mar the primitive, as our merry crew of boys and girls sported naked in the surf, fished from the rocks, or lay upon the shining beach. ”

“ I went one day with Le Brunnec, the French trader, in search of rubber trees on the plateau of Ahao, above Hanamenu, on the other side of Hiva-oa Island.
Mounted on small, but sturdy, mountain ponies, we followed the trail across the river and up the steep mountain-side clad with impenetrable jungle, climbing ever higher and higher above deep gorges and dizzying precipices, until at noon we crossed the loftiest range and dipped downward to the wide plateau.
A thousand feet above the valley, level as a prairie, and indescribably wild and deserted, the plain stretched before us. ”

“ I saw the warriors with their spears of cocoanut-wood and their deadly clubs of ironwood carved and shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones slung about their waists, and their slings of fiber, dancing in the sacred grove of the Pekia, its shadows lighted by the blaze of the flickering candlenuts and the scented sandalwood.
“‘I am The Wind That Lays Low The Mighty Tree. I am The Wave That Fills The Canoe and Delivers The People To The Sharks!’ said Tomefitu. ‘The flesh of my kinsman fills the bellies of the men of Atuona, and the gods say war! ”

“ When eight bells sounded the hour of four, I got upon my feet and in the mellow dawn saw a panorama of peak and precipice, dark and threatening, the coast of Fatu-hiva and the entrance to Oomoa Bay, the southernmost island of the Marquesas, and the harbor in which the first white men who saw the islands anchored over three hundred years ago.
Those Spaniards, on whose ships the cross was seen in cabin and forecastle, on gun and halberd, murdered many Marquesans at Oomoa to glut their taste for blood. The standard of death the white flew then has never been lowered. ”

“ Still a man leaves part of himself in every home he makes, and the wanderer, free of the one strong cord that would hold him to one place, feels always the urge of a thousand slender ties pulling him back to the thousand temporary homes he has made everywhere on the world.
So the old routine closed around me pleasantly; mornings in the shade of my palms and breadfruit, eating the breakfasts prepared for me by Exploding Eggs over the fire of cocoanut husks, baths in the clear pool of the river with my neighbors, afternoons spent in the cocoanut-groves or with merry companions on the beach. ”

“ Our destination was a waterfall, with a pool in which we might bathe, and after leaving the Pekia we followed the stream, climbing higher and higher from the sea. In the Marquesas all the rivers begin in the high mountains, where from the precipices leap the torrents in times of rain. As the valleys are mere ravines at their heads, the waters collect in their depths and roll to the ocean, rippling gently on sunny days, but after a downpour raging, rolling huge boulders over and over and tearing away cliffs.
These streams are the life of the people in the upper valleys. ”

“ To be busy about anything not necessary to living is, in Marquesan wisdom, to be idle.
Swimming in the surf, lolling at the via puna, angling from rock or canoe or fishing with line and spear outside the bay, searching for shell-fish, and riding or walking over the hills to other valleys, filled their peaceful, pleasant days. A dream-like, care-free life, lived by a people sweet to know, handsome and generous and loving.
That he never saw or heard of the slightest quarrel between individuals was the statement a century ago of Captain Porter, the American. ”

“ Miles of land, once cultivated, had been taken again by the jungle, as estates lapsed to nature after thousands of years of man. Still, even far from the houses, delicate trees had preserved themselves in some mysterious way, and oranges and limes offered themselves to me in the thickets.
The river that emptied into the bay below Grelet's plantation flowed down the valley from the heights, and beside it ran the trail, a road for half a mile, then a track growing fainter with every mile, hardly distinguishable from the tangle of trees and bushes on either side. ”

“ They are huge masses, these pig-like, tailless clowns among the graceful families of the ocean, with their small mouths and clumsy-looking bodies, but they made a fine target at which to launch harpoon or spear from the dancing bow of a canoe. Keeping one's balance is the finest art of the Marquesan fisherman, and he will stand firm while the boat rises and falls, rolls and pitches, his body swaying and balancing with the nice adjustment that is second nature to him. It is an art that should be learned in childhood. ”

“ The perfume of Hinano, of the vaovao, with its delicate blue flowers, and the vaipuhao, whose leaves are scented like violets, filled the heavy air, and I passed acres of kokou, which looks like tobacco, but has a yellow fruit of delicious odor. It was such a garden as the prince who woke the Sleeping Beauty penetrated to reach the palace where she lay entranced, and something of the same sense of dread magic lay upon it. Humanity was not so much absent as gone, and a feeling of doom and death was in the motionless air, which lay like a weight upon leaf and flower. ”

“ That gaunt, dark shore itself recalls that the history of the Marquesas is written in blood, a black spot on the white race. It is a history of evil wrought by civilization, of curses heaped on a strange, simple people by men who sought to exploit them or to mold them to another pattern, who destroyed their customs and their happiness and left them to die, apathetic, wretched, hardly knowing their own miserable plight. ”

“ When darkness overtook us, we made for ourselves the softest of ferny beds, and slept serenely, untroubled by anything, under the light of the stars.
As we returned next day to the village in the valley, we found upon a hill far from the beach the tombs of the sailors who first raised the standard of France in these islands. The eternal jungle had so housed in their monuments that we had hot work to break through the jealous lantana and pandanus to see the stones. ”

“ Mosses and ferns by the billion covered every foot of the small plateau. There were no trees. The trail was a foot deep in water, like an irrigation ditch. One still might easily break one's neck. And I reflected that Père Olivier crosses many times a year between Oomoa and Hanavave, in his black soutan and on his weary horse, in all weathers, alone; it is a fact to treasure for recalling when one hears all missionaries included in the accusation of selfishness that springs so often to the lips of many men. ”

“ The women sat upon the grass in a row, and first, in dumb show, they lifted and carried from its house to the beach a long canoe. The straining muscles of their arms, the sway of their bodies, imitated the raising of the great boat, and the walking with its weight, the launching, the waiting for the breakers and the undertow that would enable them to pass the surf line, and then the paddling in rough water. ”

“ The bugle and the fife share with the drum the rousing of martial spirit in our armies to-day, but to our savage ancestors the drum was supreme. Primitive man expressed his harmony with nature by imitating its sounds. He struck his own body or a hollow log covered with skin. Uncivilized peoples crack their fingers, snap their thighs, or strike the ground with their feet to furnish music for impromptu dancing. In Tonga they crack their fingers; in Tahiti they pound the earth with the soles of their feet; here in Atuona they clap hands. ”

“ Night fishing has its attractions in these tropics, if only for the freedom from severe heat, the glory of the moonlight or starlight, and the waking dreams that come to one upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the harpoon. The night was moonless, but the sea was covered with phosphorescence, sometimes a glittering expanse of light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels. ”

“ Drums were beating all the morning, thrilling the valley and mountain-sides with their barbaric boom-boom. The savage beat of them quickened the blood, stirring memories older than mankind, waking wild and primitive instincts. Toho's eyes gleamed, and her toes curled and uncurled like those of a cat, while she told me that the afternoon would see an old dance, a drama of the sea, of war, and feasting such as the islands had known before the whites came. ”

“ We who have become refined and diverse in our musical expression, using a dozen or scores of instruments to interpret our subtle emotions, cannot know the primitive and savage exaltation that surges through the veins when the war-drum beats. To the Marquesans it has ever been a summons to action, an inspiration to daring and bloody deeds, the call of the war-gods, the frenzy of the dance. Born of the thunder, speaking with the voice of the storm and the cataract, it rouses in man the beast with quivering nostrils and lashing tail who was part of the forest and the night. ”