Matoaka

“ I wondered that I had not fitted the phrase to him as he fixed his swimming, parrot-like eyes on the flushed face of Miss Matoaca.
"If that's all the use you'd make of it, I think we might safely trust it to you," he observed with a flattering glance. "A woman who can make your mince pies, dear lady, need not worry about her rights."
"How is George, General?" asked Miss Matoaca, with an air of gentle, offended dignity. "I heard he had come to live with you since his mother's death." ”

“ Strictly, it should have been nothing to Miss Matilda that Motauri looked most distractingly like a young woodland god, with a skin the exact shade of new heather honey, the ringlets of a faun, the features of a Roman cameo and the build of a Greek athlete.
Being a chief in the flower valley of Wailoa meant that Motauri owned a stated number of cocoanut-trees and never had to do anything except to swim and to laugh, to chase the rainbow-fish a fathom deep and to play divinely on the nose-flute. ”

“ Himself, meanwhile, paced in front, bareheaded and barefoot, a staff in his hand, in the customary chief’s dress of white kilt, shirt, and jacket, and with a conspicuous rosary about his neck. Tall but not heavy, with eager eyes and a marked appearance of courage and capacity, Mataafa makes an admirable figure in the eyes of Europeans; to those of his countrymen, he may seem not always to preserve that quiescence of manner which is thought becoming in the great. ”

“ I ask something more."
"More, Sally?"
"Yes, more, Aunt Mitty, a thousand times and ten thousand times. What do I care for a dead arm that fought for a dead king? Both are dust to-day, and I am alive. No, no, give me, not honour and loyalty that have been dead five hundred years, but truth and courage that I can turn to to-day,—not chivalric phrases that are mere empty sound, but honesty and a strong arm that I can lean on."
Miss Matoaca's head had dropped as if from weariness over her thin breast, which palpitated under the piece of old lace, like the breast of a wounded bird. ”

“ Matola is in almost every point a contrast to Nakaam. The difference is seen even in their costume: Nakaam dresses, like 147a coast man, in the long, snow-white kanzu, while Matola is a European above and a Yao below, wearing a coloured cotton waist-cloth, like all his subjects, below a commonplace European jacket. The indications of cunning, so characteristic of Nakaam, are here quite absent; Matola impresses one as an honest man, and such, in fact, he is, if we may judge by the evidence of all the Europeans at Lindi who have ever come in contact with him. ”

“ To kill the mataika. To kill the mataika, or first man, was counted a very high honour, and the most extraordinary exertions were made to obtain it. The writer once saw a young warrior, when rushing with his tribe against the enemy, rendered almost frantic by perceiving that another section of the tribe would, in spite of all his efforts, be engaged first, and gain the honour of killing the mataika. In this emergency he, as he rushed on, cut down with a furious blow of his tomahawk, a sapling which stood in his way, and gave the cry which claims the mataika. ”

“ Our enemies shall hunt our game, which will make way for the white fellows big animals! The corroboree will be held no longer, and the cooey and war shout will be silenced by the white man's thunder, and the loud crack of his snake (stockwhip) !' When you are gone there will be no smiling face to cheer Matoka when he returns from hunting his game and fighting his enemies. Who then will say a kind word to him, or teach him how the white man does his wonderful work? ”

“ My great difficulty is that the whole country is really ruled, not by the chief (Motoko) but by one whom they call the 'Lion-God.' This appears to be a hereditary office, and the holder of it lives away by himself in the mountains, and is looked upon with superstitious dread and reverence by the Chief and his people. However, I have now got things on a friendly footing, but I shall have to go back to Fort Salisbury, in order to get certain articles to appease the 'Lion-God,' and then return here before I shall finally be able to conclude the treaty with Motoko. ”

“ CHAPTER VI The Counsel of Lee
“A few days after the occupation, some drunken soldiers were heard talking in the back yard to our negroes, and it was gathered from what they said that the Federals were afraid General Lee had formed an ambuscade somewhere in the neighbourhood of the city, and that he might fall upon them at any time and deliver Richmond out of their hands. How our people wished it might be so!” Matoaca relates. “Do not buoy yourself up with that hope, my dear,” said her monitor. “There’s no hope save in the mercy of our conquerors. ”

“ So, having been joined by Taylor, the Native Commissioner, we rode off across the veldt towards the Matopos, some six miles distant from the fort. On arriving at Mapisa’s Kraal, a friendly chief, we off–saddled our horses (but never let our guns out of our hands, for even friendlies are not to be too blindly trusted) , and, taking two or three of his scouts with us, we climbed up into some koppies which commanded a view of the enemy’s position, and of the Matopos generally. Awful country, a weird, jumbled mass of grey granite boulders thickly interspersed with bush, and great jagged mountains. ”

“ The sound nerved Matshaka to fresh effort. He knew that his time had conic—that he would never gain the sanctuary; so he now strove only to reach the top of the ridge from where the church could be seen. This he just succeeded in doing, and then he turned and faced his pursuers, who were only a few yards behind him. Instinctively he had thus far carried his knobbed stick; this he now flung away over the heads of his three enemies, lest he should be tempted to use it. ”

“ At Masasi the epidemic conviviality of the whole male population was a totally unforeseen impediment to this object, and here at Chingulungulu it seems either that Matola has not sufficient influence to obtain wise men for me to question, or that he does not care to reveal the wisdom of his people to a stranger. It is true that he possesses a good deal of information himself, and has already on more than one occasion sat with us and talked about the history of his tribe, but whenever I particularly want him, he is not to be found, and we are told that he is hunting on the Rovuma. ”

“ When Matshaka left the mission for his home the rain had cleared off; the steep, green slopes of the Intsiza shone in the sunlight, and foaming cataracts shot down the gleaming crags. In his eyes was a new-born light, and his heart was the home of a virginal peace from whose gentle face the spirits of wrath had fled away—never to return.
Three Probably no more villainous and unmitigated fraud than the Kafir “isanuse” or witch-doctor cumbers the earth. Pretending to the faculty of divination, he trains his powers of observation and memory to an extraordinary extent. ”

“ Next to Matola, the Yao chief of Chingulungulu, no man in the country is oftener in men’s mouths than his illustrious colleague and fellow tribesman, Nakaam, of Chiwata in the north-western part of the Makonde plateau. The Europeans on the coast are not agreed as to which of these two chiefs is the more powerful. In the interior, however, Matola seems to be far more looked up to by the natives than the chief of Chiwata. ”

“ The swish and lapping of the waters on the Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island of New Guinea, filled the air with a quiet hush of expectation.
In a little white house sat a tall, dark man with his wife. The man was Ruatoka. If you had asked "Who is Ruatoka?" of all the Papuans for miles around Port Moresby, they would have wondered at your ignorance. "Ruatoka," they would have told you, was a "Jesus man." He walked among their villages, and did not fear them when they threatened him with spears and clubs. He gave them medicines when they were ill, and nursed them. ”

“ Look where they would, in every direction, this white woman and the two men were completely surrounded by an unbroken mass of wild and armed savages, who stood gazing upon the strange apparitions in their midst.
Tamate, without a pause, perfectly calm, and showing no signs of fear, spoke to Pouta and his men through old Vaaburi and Iko.
"We have come," he said, "so that we may be friends. We have come without weapons. We have brought with us a woman of our tribe, for we come in peace. We are strangers. But we come with great things to tell. ”

“ It was a definite challenge.
“The warriors who witnessed the act give the coup to Matoska, friend!” persisted the spokesman.
Red Owl was a brave youth and a close rival of Matoska, both for war honors and for the hand of the prettiest maiden in the tribe. He had hoped to be recognized as one who fought in defense of their homes by the side of Brave Hawk; that would please the Blue Sky, he thought; but the honor was conferred upon his rival! ”

“ But presently the daughter of Fujiwara Morosuke, minister of the Right, entered the palace, and although her Court rank was not at first superior to that of the dainagon's daughter, her child had barely reached its third month when, through Morosuke's irresistible influence, it was nominated heir to the throne. Motokata's disappointment proved so keen that his health became impaired and he finally died—of chagrin, the people said. In those days men believed in the power of disembodied spirits for evil or for good. ”

“ All her anxious hospitality, all her offers of cream and partridges, could not for a single minute efface it. Turning my head I discerned the same expression, still fainter, still gentler, reflected on Miss Matoaca's lips—as if some subtle bond of sympathy between them were asking always, beneath the hereditary courtesy: "Can this be possible? Are we, whose mother was a Fairfax, whose father was a Bland, sitting at our own table with a man who is not a gentleman by birth?—who has even brought a market basket to our kitchen door? ”

“ The Motu is a tamed and pleasant savage who only murders when it is conscientiously necessary. In the Port he is quite a city fellow, wearing his great bush of hair with style, but not aggressively. His kind brown eyes hold no reproach for the white folks who set him to minor household drudgeries. He is inclined to be timid; but in Papua you mustn’t put too much faith in kind brown eyes. Even the butcherous Koiaris and the cannibal Goaribaris can look at you with winning gentleness when you visit their villages. ”

“ And now the church bell tolled out the word so clearly that Matshaka wondered how the thing could ever have puzzled him—“Intsiza, Intsiza, Intsiza.”
Matshaka was a Pondo. A heathen and a polygamist, he had lived his fifty years without a single aspiration towards anything better than the surrounding savage conditions afforded him. A man of strong character, he had amassed considerable wealth, and attained to an influential position in his clan. ”

“ Curious, too, that her dread and loathing of the man Gregson should have urged her the same way. But so they did, reason fusing with desire like spray with wind, and all conspiring to loose her from the firm hold of habit and training.
"We can go now—this minute," Motauri was whispering. "There are boats to be had below on the beach. We can reach Huapu before morning. None shall see us go."
"You forget the path—the people—" She could hardly frame the words with her lips. ”

“ Melanesian conception of the tamaniu, a person's external soul lodged in an animal or other object. Among the Melanesians of Mota, one of the New Hebrides islands, the conception of an external soul is carried out in the practice of daily life. The Mota word for soul is atai. “The use of the word atai in Mota seems properly and originally to have been to signify something peculiarly and intimately connected with a person and sacred to him, something that he has set his fancy upon when he has seen it in what has seemed to him a wonderful manner, or some one has shewn it to him as such. ”

“ It was watched but not fed or worshipped; the natives believed that it came at call, and that the life of the man was bound up with the life of his tamaniu, if a living thing, or with its safety; should it die, or if not living get broken or be lost, the man would die. Hence in case of sickness they would send to see if the tamaniu was safe and well. This word has never been used apparently for the soul in Mota ”

“ She advanced a step into the kitchen, and as Miss Matoaca followed her she replied in an abashed and faltering voice:—
"I am sorry, Sister Mitty, that we do not agree in our principles. There is nothing else that I will not sacrifice to you, but when a question of principle is concerned, however painful it is to me, I must be firm." ”

“ And although a single spark and a high wind are sufficient in combination to obliterate a larger city in one day, great fires are unknown in Matsue, and small ones are of rare occurrence.
The charm is peculiar to the city; and of the Inari in question this tradition exists:
When Naomasu, the grandson of Iyeyasu, first came to Matsue to rule the province, there entered into his presence a beautiful boy, who said: 'I came hither from the home of your august father in Echizen, to protect you from all harm. But I have no dwelling-place, and am staying therefore at the Buddhist temple of Fu-mon-in. ”