Niue

“ Polygamy is still practised among the inhabitants of Niue, though it is fast dying out under the influence of the missionaries, who have further conferred a vast boon on the people by their discouragement of infanticide, which at one time prevailed to a terrible extent. The mere check which they have placed on this custom has already raised the number of the population by more than three hundred—a considerable increase when the small size of the island is taken into consideration. ”

“ It is a day of molten gold, with a sea coloured like a sheet of sapphire glass in a cathedral window. I am busy washing up my breakfast things at the door (there is no false shame about the performance of domestic duties in the capital city of Niué) when a couple of native girls appear on the grass pathway, their wavy hair loose and flowing, their white muslin dresses kilted up high over strong brown limbs. Each carries a clean “pareo” in her hand. They are going for a swim, one of them informs me in broken English: will I come too? ”

“ The industries of the island filled up many a pleasant morning. Niué is supposed to be the most hard-working of all the Pacific islands, and certainly its people do not seem to eat the bread of idleness. Here, there is no lounging and dreaming and lotus-eating on the sounding coral shore—perhaps there isn’t much shore anyway; perhaps because the Savage Islander is not made that way. The food of the people consists largely of yams, and in a country which has hardly any depth of soil, these are hard to grow, and need care. ”

“ We the chiefs and rulers and governors of Niué-Fekai desire to pray Your Majesty, if it be your pleasure, to stretch out towards us your mighty hand, that Niué may hide herself in it and be safe. We are afraid lest some other powerful nation should come and trouble us, and take possession of our island, as some islands in this quarter of the world have been taken by great nations. ”

“ No one can be extravagant; no one can “keep up appearances” at the cost of comfort; no one is over-anxious, or worried, or excited over anything’—except when the rare, the long-expected ship comes in, and the natives rend the air with yells of joy, and the girls cocoanut-oil their hair, and the white men rush for clean duck suits and fresh hats, and the mails come in, and the news is distributed, and cargoes go out, and every one feasts from dawn till dusk, and all the island is in a state of frantic ebullition for at least three days. Then, indeed, Niué is alive. ”

“ It was the foolish man from Mua way, whom they called a witch-doctor—and every one knows that such a thing does not exist, high chieftainess; but they said he was that thing, and he said so himself, because he was proud and mad. Now, we all know that there are many devils on Niué, and that the misinaris never were able to drive them all away. And there is a very bad devil on that road to Mua, right where the six palm-trees stand up by themselves among the graves. It is powerless in the day, but at night there is no Niué man who would dare to go there. ”

“ If they died from hard work that was their look out.
“At length we arrived off Niue, or Savage Island, to which Captain Cook gave that name because the inhabitants were then and for many years afterwards fierce and barbarous in the extreme. Missionaries, both native and English, I had heard say, had gone among them, and the people had all become Christians and civilised. We could see that a well-made road ran round the island, and at intervals there were white-washed cottages, with gardens full of flowers, and neat churches peeping out among the trees. ”

“ I have to report that the London Missionary Society’s schooner Niue returned to Daru late last night from what was intended to be a trip to Cape Blackwood, and thence along the coast back to Daru. The captain of the Niue states that on the 8th instant, while anchored off Risk Point on Goaribari Island, near the mouth of the River Omati, a party consisting of the Rev. James Chalmers, Rev. ”

“ In truth its power and resonance were astonishing, and for once in my life I found it a positive pleasure to talk to a native through an interpreter. The similarity of Niuéan and Tongan was so close that I was able to appreciate the clever way in which he turned his sentences so as to convey the exact meaning without a superfluous word. After the usual compliments I explained that the Queen had answered the petition of the late king by taking Niué under her protection; that the people need never fear seizure of their country by one of the great Powers ”

“ Nihéu is generally stigmatized as kolohe (verse 11) , mischievous, for no other reason apparently than that he was an active spirit, full of courage, given to adventure and heaven-defying audacities, such as put the Polynesian Mawi and the Greek Prometheus in bad odor with the gods of their times. One of these offensive actions was Nihéu’s theft of a certain ulu, breadfruit, which one of the gods rolled with a noise like that of thunder in the underground caverns of the southern regions of the world. Nihéu is represented as a great sport, an athlete, skilled in all the games of his people. ”

“ But Niu-Noa overcame the water with wood, and made a boat to save himself, which could go far; and he polished a stone of five colours—the rainbow—and therewith he fastened the heavens, and lifted them up on a tortoise-shell. Then he killed the black dragon Kong-Kong, and choked the holes in heaven with the ashes of a pumpkin. ”

“ Niheu was a fearless warrior and had very little respect for the strength of others. He was so brave that he oftentimes fought against a whole army, without the least hesitation. When he was ready to start he took up his war club, Wawaikalani, and placing one end of it on the cliff, the other resting on the canoe, he walked ashore upon it. After landing he proceeded to the top of the hill of Haupu, where the chief Kapepeekauila was living, in company with Hina, the mother of Niheu, who was for the time being his wife. ”

“ One night, she had been wandering with Tinovao and Amaru by the lagoon, in which the reflected stars burned so brightly that one might easily believe the island hung in mid-heaven. She looked at them for a long time; then, with her arms round the two girls, who understood her words only vaguely, she murmured to herself: "What does it matter? What does anything matter when one looks up there? And life is going ... life and youth."
She said good-night to her friends, and laughingly plucked the red hibiscus flower from behind the shell-like ear of Tinovao as they parted. ”

“ The war-flags of the Hauhaus were flown from the Niu, and the people daily marched around its foot in their "Pai-mariré" procession, intoning the chants their prophet had taught them. This Niu was one of the first worship-poles planted in Taranaki by the Hauhau prophet's command, and it was the centre of many a wild fanatic gathering. At its foot there was planted a large piece of unworked greenstone—as was done when the first house-pillar was set up—as the whatu of the sacred pole; this block of pounamu is still there, says Bent. ”

“ One, when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge;
Then, when, a prince, he rises with his pearl. The poet visioned Nohea’s emotions, perhaps, but he had schooled himself to postpone his satisfaction until the days harvest was gathered. When we had paddled the canoe into shallow waters, and the sun was slanting fast down the western side of earth, Nohea surrendered 244himself to the realization or dissipation of his dream. He knew that a thousand shells contain no pearls, that the princely state came to few in decades. ”

“ All the inhabitants of the village—men, women, and children—formed up, and began to march round and round the Niu, with a priest in their midst, rushing frantically to and fro, and brandishing a Maori weapon as he yelled a ferocious-sounding chant. ”

“ Nohea possessed that, and also physical strength and skill for the diving, for 123the handling of boats, and for the making of copra. When there was no white missionary at Takaroa, he was the hierophant of the Mormon church. He conducted the services and advised the faithful, collected the tithes, and admonished the sinners. He did not fail in zeal for that task. Nohea painted a hell darker than a shark’s jaws, a pit of horror, lit by black flames which burned the non-Mormons, and a heaven on earth where baked pig was a free dish at all hours. ”

“ He stretches upward, but the hill rises also until he is spun out into a mere cobweb and is famishing with hunger. Niheu advises him to lean over to Hawaii that his grandmother may feed him. After three days, this advice reaches his ear and he bends over Haleakala mountain on Maui, where the groove remains to this day, and puts his head in at the door of his grandmother's house in Hawaii, where he is fed until he is fat again. Niheu, left behind in the boat, sees his brother's feet growing fat, and finally cuts off one to remind Kana of the business in hand. ”

“ If I can only get a dress made for her to go out in, I’ll send her to my sister, Mabel—who would believe whatever I might tell her. (turns to table back to audience)
Enter Niobe R. U. E.—comes down R. C.
Nio. (not seeing Dunn when first entering) Ah me! I would I were a stone again! Anything were better than to suffer such indignities as now I meet. Petramos! you will remove my cares as Eos lifts the sable pall of night.
Dunn. I don’t know anything of Knight’s pall. Don’t talk undertaking business. What is it? ”

“ IT was such another moonlight night as that on which the Princess Sado-ko kept her last tryst with the artist Junzo, but in the Nijo gardens no sight was reminiscent of the flowering gardens of Komatzu. No bamboo grove offered inviting lanes for loitering lovers, no stately camphor trees threw their flickering shadows of mystery upon the moonlit grass. ”

“ The scene is a Maori kainga on the east coast of New Zealand, date 1869, time of day about 9 a.m. The village, composed of some twenty huts, stands in a clearing surrounded by dense bush, and in the foreground stands the Niu, the sacred pole round which the fanatics perform their mad dances and mystic incantations. ”

“ CHAPTER II NOW Nio Kuro, a Prince and the most famous hunter in the kingdom, had come in his boat down the river that ran through the haunted wood. With him he had brought many servants and his pack of trained leopards, with which he hunted, and which were swifter and had keener scent than any dogs. Possibly Nio Kuro had never heard of this forest, or it may have been that he became so excited when the leopards started on their wild chase that he forgot to be afraid of goblins. ”

“ With the river Noe in Derbyshire may be connoted Noe, the British form of Noah: The Newburns in Scotland and Northumberland can hardly have been so named because they were novel or new rivers, and in view of the fact that British mythology combined Noah’s ark (Welsh arch) with a mare, it may be questioned whether the place-name Newark (originally Newarcha) , really meant as at present supposed New Work. [494] It may be that the Trojan horse story was purely mythological, and had originally relation to the supposition that mankind all emerged from the body of the Solar Horse. ”

“ The nohu lay on the coral strand where the tide lapped it, looking the twin of a battered, mossy rock, so deceiving that one must have the sight of the aborigine to avoid stepping upon it, if in one’s way. Put a foot on it, and before one could move, the nohu raised the bony spines of its dorsal fin and pierced one’s flesh as would a row of hatpins ”

“ The pony was Kwa Niu and his rider Gubbins. Kwa Niu played the very devil with his own compatriots, not because he owed any allegiance to his English owner, but because he was a devil from start to finish.
Suddenly a bugle rang out above the noise of the yelling mob, some horsemen in gaudy silk jackets dashed among the disordered Chinese, and deliverance arrived in the shape of a small party of American marines, headed by a young ensign with drawn sword. ”

“ Dunn falls flat on stage, muttering measurement and gathering up loose patterns, pushing them into his vest.)
Car. (R. C., indignantly to Niobe) I had some business with my husband, but I can wait.
Nio. (L. C.) Oh no! We would not have you wait. He’s here and you may speak.
Car. (R.) You’re too gracious. I came, Peter, unknown to Helen, to see if you could not remove my doubts; and I find you, as usual, in open unblushing companionship with this woman.
Dunn. Open! Yes open! There is no deception. None. (rising)
Car. You loved me once, Peter.
Nio. (crosses to Carrie) He loves you still. ”

“ To explain the relation of these three classes of the nobility I would say that by “niau-pio” was understood the very highest cast, not only by descent but also by power, such as the sovereigns of the islands, the moi, their children—if the mothers were of sufficient rank—and the aimoku, or district chiefs. By pio was understood the children of a brother and sister or half-brother and half-sister, whose parents were both niau-pio. By naha was understood the children of a father with his daughter, or an uncle with his niece, both the parents being niau-pio. ”

“ Nio. (after regarding Corney disdainfully—perplexed) I’d rather Petramos should tell me what to say.
Corn. (rises and goes step to R.; aside) Can she have confided the affair to Peter, and is this just simplicity, or only cunning?
Nio. If you like best conversing with yourself, I shall not miss your chatter.
Corn. (quickly recovering himself) I beg your pardon! She isn’t such a fool; (sits again, crosses legs) Excuse me. You find a great change, I suppose?
Nio. Ah yes! All things are changed, even men are not as they were. Why do you hide your legs in those loose sleeves? ”