South Seas

“ A person who has never been in the South Seas cannot appreciate the pleasure of gliding along a tropical bay, just close enough to see the small grass villages and the dense jungles behind; the seas breaking over the coral reefs ahead, and the pure blue waters underneath; the tropical birds flying overhead, and canoes paddling along the shores. ”

“ So did men distinguish their origin in the South Seas, preserve the glory of the past and gain respect from those around them.
Once more out on the world’s mercy, released, in tears, those old relics of a resplendent barbaric age roamed from grog shanty to grog shanty. In those walls of the white man they could lay their weary heads from dawn to dawn. ”

“ To have an island of one’s own, in the beautiful South Seas, to live remote from strain and worry, and out of the clash and roar of twentieth-century civilization—to pass one’s days in a land of perpetual summer ”

“ The South Seas; to have wandered among their green isles is to have seen a new world, a new heaven and a new earth. The white reef with its whiter rim of plunging surf, the swaying palms, the flashing waterfall, the joyous people, straight as Greeks and colored like varnished leather, the bread-fruit tree and the brown orange, the purple splendor of the vine called Bougainvillia, and above all the volcanic mountains, green fringed with huge trees, with tree ferns and palms, the whole tied together into an impenetrable jungle by the long armed lianas. ”

“ Going from Po-Po’s house toward the anchorage of the harbour of Taloo, you catch no glimpse of the water until, coming out from deep groves, you all at once find yourself upon the beach. A bay, considered by many voyagers the most beautiful in the South Seas, then lies before you. You stand upon one side of what seems a deep green river, flowing through mountain passes to the sea. Right opposite a majestic promontory divides the inlet from another, called after its discoverer, Captain Cook. ”

“ The native beauties are here in a merry crowd, intent quite as much upon enjoyment as on business. Scarcely one but wears a flower behind her ear—and if you have ever been in the South Seas, you will know what that pretty little signal means, but if you have not, why then I shall not tell you—and all are so wreathed, and crowned, and necklaced with woven blossoms, that the air is heavy with scent, and the market-place looks as though the transformation scene of a pantomine were just about to begin, with a full chorus of flower-decked nymphs appearing for the dance. ”

“ Past the veranda, on which the family sleeps through the warm hours of the day, the river flows out gently to the sea; a broad, still water, deep and glassy clear, peopled with darting shoals of fish—mullet, young pampano, and nato, the trout of the South Seas. Opposite the river mouth the reef is broken by a pass, through which the steady lines of combers sweep in to crash and tumble on the 279 bar. Morning and afternoon the breakers are alive with naked children, shouting and glistening brown in the sunlight as they ride the waves. ”

“ The place was large, and one might have spent hours examining the things it contained—the fruit of twenty years in the South Seas. There were wreaths of bright-colored shell—the favorite parting gift of the islands—from the Paumotus, from Raiatea, from Aitutaki, and Mangaias. There were fans from Manihiki, woven in patterns of dyed pandanus, and Savage Island fans, decorated with human hair. Ranged on a series of shelves, I found a notable collection of penus—the taro-mashers of eastern Polynesia, implements in which the culture of each group expresses itself. ”

“ But with all their disadvantages these islands have a fascination for the traveller that no others have, and when once the taste of the free and adventurous life of the South Seas has been acquired, there is always a longing to return to them which nothing will suppress. Neither stiff joints nor old age make one iota of difference, the yearning will not be satisfied by anything short of a speedy return. ”

“ The islands of the South Seas are places of an interest curiously limited. The ethnological problem presented by the native is interesting only to men of science, commerce is negligible, there is little real agriculture, and no industry at all. There remains the charm of living among people whose outlook upon life is basically different from our own; of living with a simplicity foreign to anything in one's experience, amid surroundings of a beauty unreal both in actuality and in retrospect. ”

“ An Englishman with a hint of Oxford in his voice—quite obviously what we call a gentleman—a reader of reviews, the possessor (at his charming place on Nukutere) of an enviable collection of books on the natural history and ethnology of the South Seas, he seldom speaks of himself or of his people at home. For twenty years he has been known in this part of the world—trading on Penrhyn, Rakahanga, Tupuai, the atolls of the Paumotu. He speaks a dozen of the island dialects, can join in the singing of Utes, or bring a roar of applause by his skill in the dances of widely separated groups. ”

“ Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam. Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach, the narrow forest of shrub and palm, the empty lagoon, a border of misty islands on the farther side. ”

“ Hence his visits to the great Pacific ports that can be reached by liner; hence, in most cases, his gradually acquired conviction that the islands are, after all, very much like any other place in the tropics—beautiful, interesting, but—— Well, writer fellows always exaggerate: every one knows that.
Hotel dinners, big liners, shops, hired carriages, guides, and picture postcards—these things are death to the spirit of the South Seas. This is the first lesson that the island wanderer must learn. Where every one goes the bloom is off the peach. ”

“ When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the ‘big canoe’ of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosom the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breast is soon converted into the bitterest hate.
The enormities perpetrated in the South Seas upon some of the inoffensive islanders will nigh pass belief. ”

“ And when the full moon peered over the ocean rim, touching with dim light the feathery palms that sheltered the tin roofs of the scattered coral-built houses, it looked like some staged faery town of a South Sea isle. Often by night some strange-rigged ship would hug the coast-line for hours while its crew of blackbirders crept ashore and kidnapped native men and women from the villages. ”

“ I have seen so much of the South Seas that I desire to see more, and I get so much health here that I dread a return to our vile climates. I have applied accordingly to the missionary folk to let me go round in the MORNING STAR; and if the Boston Board should refuse, I shall get somehow to Fiji, hire a trading schooner, and see the Fijis and Friendlies and Samoa. He would be a South Seayer, Mr. Burlingame. Of course, if I go in the MORNING STAR, I see all the eastern (or western?) islands. ”

“ The days passed in the rapid and dreamy fashion peculiar to the South Seas. From time to time I thought of Hall and his diminutive schooner drifting about becalmed among the coral islands, or perhaps only a score of miles off Tahiti, helpless to reach the sighted land. The Potii Ravarava was a full week overdue when the calm weather came to an end. The heat was intense that afternoon, and toward sunset towering masses of cloud began to pile up along the horizon to the north. The sky grew black ”

“ Many leagues before us lay Les Isles Dangereux, the Low Archipelago, first stopping-point on our journey to the far cannibal islands yet another thousand miles away across the empty seas. Before we saw the green banners of Tahiti's cocoanut palms again we would travel not only forward over leagues of tossing water but backward across centuries of time. For in those islands isolated from the world for eons there remains a living fragment of the childhood of our Caucasian race. ”

“ To be shipwrecked upon a barren island is not wholly unknown to mankind but may well be regarded at all times with foreboding and horror.
“Come, then,” said the elder De Jiminez; “let us walk to the forest yonder. We shall find better shelter there, if nothing more.”
“Wait a moment, please!” I exclaimed, for I had been watching Bryonia and Nux, who stood apart eagerly conversing together.
“Why should we wait?” demanded Alfonso, annoyed at my interference.
“Because these blacks are natives of the South Seas,” I replied, “and they think they recognize this island. ”

“ That wide field of ocean, called loosely the South Seas, extends from tropic to tropic, and from perhaps 123 degrees W. to 150 degrees E., a parallelogram of one hundred degrees by forty-seven, where degrees are the most spacious. Much of it lies vacant, much is closely sown with isles, and the isles are of two sorts. No distinction is so continually dwelt upon in South Sea talk as that between the ‘low’ and the ‘high’ island, and there is none more broadly marked in nature. The Himalayas are not more different from the Sahara. ”

“ It is nothing of the sort, it is plain, bald fact, as any one who has ever lived in the islands can testify. There is nothing more commonly known in the South Seas than the weird power possessed by kings and heroes to slay with a word, and instances of its exercise could be found in every group. ”

“ Papeete is the centre of the pearling industry of the South Seas. Hundreds of little sloops lie here during the hurricane season, while the captains strut about the streets. None of the captains can navigate. They sail entirely from dead reckoning, often taking weeks to go a few hundred miles, when a captain who could navigate would take only as many days. But they put no value on time. They simply look for an island until they find it. Every year, when it is time for the pearling vessels to come in from the Taumotus, there are always many missing which are never heard from again. ”

“ Outside, the palm-trees rustle endlessly, and the surf sings on the reef the long, low, perilous sweet song of the dreamy South Sea world—the song that has lured so many away into these lonely coral lands, to remember their Northern loves and homes no more—the song that, once heard, will whisper through the inmost chambers of the heart, across the years, and across the world till death. ”

“ We went in Port Mary on Santa Anna island. Hundreds of natives ran down the beaches, and tumbling into canoes, darted after us, all the time screaming at the top of their voices. After edging through the small lagoon and dropping anchor, we were surrounded in an incredibly short time by a hundred canoe-loads of savages—people who in looks and actions fully justified my expectations of what South Sea Islanders should be like. They started aboard, but with guns we kept them back; and they circled round the Snark, waving spears and clubs and shouting at the top of their voices. ”

“ The busy corallines before mentioned are so numerous in the South Seas that they build their coral walls everywhere. As they have an objection apparently to commence building in shallow water, they are obliged to keep off the shore a distance of a mile or more, so that when they reach the surface they enclose a belt of water of that width, which is guarded by the reef from the violence of the waves, and forms a splendid natural harbour. Almost every South-Sea island has its coral reef round it, and its harbour of still water between the reef and the shore. ”

“ THE ports of Australia and New Zealand swarm with sea captains, traders, and others, who know the South Seas as you know the palm of your hand. The Canadian Pacific steamers plying between Vancouver and Sydney by way of Hawaii call at the Fijis, and the Tongas are easily reached from Auckland, New Zealand. ”

“ Among the inhabitants of any community, will always be found some characters of sufficient strength and uniqueness to distinguish them from the herd. In the South Seas, they are usually chiefs, or old retired sea-captains and beach-combers, who hold this position in the Australasian, Melanesian and Micronesian sections, but in the Polynesian section the place of honour unquestionably belongs to Helene of Raiatea. ”

“ The British Pacific Islands need settlers; young Britons at home are only too ready to adventure themselves. Why do they not? There are several reasons. The first, perhaps, is that neither party can hear the other. In England few possess any information about the South Sea Islands. In the Pacific the white residents (almost all New Zealand traders and Government officials) are possessed with an idea that only wastrels of the worst kind drift out from England to the South Seas, and that nothing better is to be looked for. ”