Tamatave

“ This Lemuroid is probably the best known to travellers in Madagascar, at least by ear, as no one can travel along the most frequented route in the island, that from Tamatave to Antananarivo, without often hearing the cries of these animals as he passes through the great forest. They are not often seen, but their long drawn-out melancholy cries are frequently heard, a strange wailing sound, as if of people in distress, or children crying. ”

“ Myriads of children, charming, but very dirty, roll in the gutter around them. Poor old women! In their dull, sad lives these market days stand out like nails placed at intervals in a wall, on which their recollections are hung. I remember at Tamatave seeing the old Malagachy women arrive from all sides, almost naked, their ribs projecting under their [Pg 221] sickly skin, emaciated, hideous, yet having walked twelve or fifteen miles to sell two eggs and a cabbage palm—in reality to gossip with their neighbours. Human nature is the same everywhere. ”

“ The road to Tamatave was by no means lonely, for, being the highway from the seaport to the capital, there was constant traffic both of travellers and of merchandise. There were also great droves of cattle making their way to the coast—for a large part of the wealth of the chiefs and nobles of the land consists of cattle, which are exported to the islands of Bourbon and Mauritius, and disposed of to the shipping that come there for supplies. ”

“ Ancient Soot returned to the home of his forefathers, and Mamba walked smartly along the road that leads to the seaport of Tamatave.
He spent that night in the residence of a friend; the next in the hut of a government wood-cutter.
Felling timber, as might be supposed, was, and still is, an important branch of industry in Madagascar. Forests of varied extent abound in different parts of the country, and an immense belt of forest of two or three days’ journey in width covers the interior of the island. ”

“ Another adventure which was good to laugh at afterwards but very unpleasant at the time befell me on the beach at Tamatave, Madagascar. I was mate of a pretty little brig and went ashore one night to fetch the captain, who was dining with somebody. It was a glorious night with a full moon, but very late, and I do not know what prompted me to go with the two good fellows who rowed. We were soon [Pg 36] ashore and, the time hanging heavily, we all decided on a bathe. ”

“ This man has made a considerable fortune by commerce, and went to his native France a few years ago with the intention of remaining there. But the intercourse with cultivated men and women seemed to him no equivalent for the idle, entirely animal life in Madagascar. So he soon returned to Tamatavé, to his slave-women, and there he will probably end his days. The European is truly a wonderful creature. In Europe he can scarcely find a girl to his taste, and his chosen one is expected to possess all the perfections under the sun ”

“ The teachers from Rarotonga had grown into strong, good men and women. Their love for Tamate was like the love of children to a father. The little girls and boys at the village schools rushed to welcome the great white chief and his wife, and shrieked with laughter when they tried to speak the strange words of new tribes.
Many natives too had learned to love Tamate’s Master. All life was changed for them because Tamate had come to New Guinea, and they felt for him a love that was deeper and stronger than their love for life. Often they went with him when they thought it was to death. ”

“ Although during his lifetime he saw many of the fierce men of the islands won for Christ, and trying to live as He wishes men to live, still the greater part of his work was to break down the [Pg 65] hatred and cruelty of the wildest tribes. So, though he had his house at Port Moresby, he was seldom there for any length of time.
On one of his voyages westward along the coast he sighted three canoes. The men in the canoes were waiting to trade with natives from the village of Namoa. When they saw Tamate they all went ashore and ate together on the beach. ”

“ When he went away to make peace with new tribes he would have liked to take his wife with him, and she wished very much to go. But she was as eager as Tamate was to think of others first. She was a strong woman. She did not say much, but whenever she saw what was the right thing to do she did it. She knew that the teachers would be lonely if they both went, and that the natives might not be so willing to please them as they now were to please her husband and herself. So when Tamate went away she stayed at Suau. ”

“ 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. ”

“ IN time the natives grew friendly again. Then Tamate thought of other places. He had not come to New Guinea to teach and help the people of one little island on its shore only.
He wished to go here and there and everywhere, that far and wide he might let men know that he and those who followed him meant peace and friendship. So he would open the way. Later he would go back to leave teachers with the chiefs whose friendship he had won. In many villages his students would have been killed at once if they had gone alone. It needed a man of strong courage, quick wit, and great heart to go first. ”

“ One morning he set sail on the Nieu, which had taken the place of the Harrier, for Cape Blackwood. The natives there, and on the large island near, were very strong and fierce. Tamate knew that he might be killed, but then he knew, too, that if he could win those wild men, he would take away the great barrier between Christ and the tribes who lived round the gulf of water into which the Fly River flowed. If these men were to stop fighting and to listen to the story of Christ, other tribes would be glad to do so too. They would be grateful to be free from the fear of these cruel warriors. ”

“ The friends had not to part at once. Tamate [Pg 87] stayed some days in the island, but he was so busy seeing people and speaking that there was not much time for story-telling. Twenty-four years before this, after the ship-wreck at Savage Island, he had landed at Samoa with nothing except the clothes he wore. He had made friends there as he always did, and now many of them, as well as others who had only heard of him before, wished to see him.
A great open-air meeting was held. Hundreds and hundreds of native men and women gathered to listen to him and to their own King Malietoa. ”

“ When Tamate left Motu-motu to go far west to the wildest tribes of all, who lived near the Fly River, Aveo still trusted in his charms and in his songs to the spirits of the earth and sky and sea.
Many years afterwards, Tamate came back [Pg 98] from the Fly River to see his old friends and to cheer the teachers who lived in the villages along the shore. When he reached the village where Aveo lived, the news of his coming spread quickly, and Aveo hurried to the teacher’s house to see his old friend. After they had greeted each other, Aveo said, “What about those things, Tamate?” ”

“ All the time that Tamate was in Rarotonga he was longing to be at more dangerous work amongst those who lived to fight and kill each other, and who had no one to teach them.
His thoughts were so much with these wild tribes that he made others think of them too. Many of his students had caught his spirit, and longed, as he did, to go to the island of New Guinea, where very wild men lived and fought. Some of the teachers he had trained went before him. They knew it was dangerous, but they went with joy, [Pg 29] because they too had learned how great and glad a thing it is to live for others. ”

“ When he reached the island of Kiushiu he made his way to the province of Higo, and finally settled down in the plain of Kumamoto. Now that Tametomo found himself free to do just as he liked, his thirst for conflict became so great that he could not restrain himself. He gathered round him a band of fighters as wild as himself and challenged the men in all the neighbouring provinces to come out and match their strength against his. In twenty battles which followed this challenge Tametomo was never once defeated, so great was his strength, and his cleverness in directing his soldiers. ”

“ As they climbed her side, the anchor was weighed, the Miro swung round, her engines started, and, carried down by the swift stream, she slipped past the packed masses of silent men who lined the banks.
It is a great thing to be a pathfinder through a country which no man has penetrated before. But it is a greater thing to do as these missionary-scouts did on their journey up the Aivai and find a path of friendship into savage lives. To do that was the greatest joy in Tamate's life. ”

“ Tamatoa, instructed by the Holy Spirit, and aided by others who had learnt something of the truths of Christianity, had for some time been labouring among his fellow-islanders. He had himself been converted by what might well be considered a providential circumstance. Two years before, a small vessel, having on board the king, Pomare, Mr Wilson, the missionary, and several Tahitians, had been driven by a storm from her anchorage at Eimeo down to Raiatea. ”

“ As the news of Tamate’s death came to Daru, and Motu-motu, Port Moresby and Suau, and to all the villages between them, New Guinea was stricken with sorrow. Men and women and children were sick with grief. ”

“ The sun is over the range, and Tamatea’s gloomy peak is outlined in sharp symmetry against the burning west. In the deep gullies between the spear-head and the ridge of the Sacred Fire the smoky-blue mists are already forming, and wreathing and creeping around the tangled shrubberies of bush that have escaped the general massacre. The harbour lies a sheet of scarcely moving tender turquoise, just a shade lighter than the face of the famous Tikitapu, inaccurately called the Blue Lake by the pakeha ”

“ In accordance with the teaching of Bishop Patteson, and with the authority of the great man of the island, the society of the Great Tamate had forbidden the use of the bow and arrow in private quarrels under penalty of a fine to them. On this occasion the man who had been guilty of the offence hastened to atone for it with a pig, and all was quiet again. It is not surprising that membership in so powerful a society should be valued and not readily resigned. ”

“ But courage always arouses chivalry in the hearts of friends and foes alike, and it seemed to Tametomo's enemies a pity to put such a brave man to death. In the whole land there was no man who could match him in bending the bow and sending the arrow home to its mark, so it was decided to spare his life at the last moment. But to prevent him from using his wonderful skill against them, his enemies cut the sinews of both his arms and sent him away to the island of Oshima off the coast of the province of Idzuto live. ”

“ Never before had those chiefs seen so weird, so wonderful a sight or heard a voice chant their wild melodies with such strange effect. They all stared. Even the tambu maidens stood as though riveted to the forest floor in envious wonder. A drum began softly to beat out the tribal notes, “Too Woomb! Too Woomb!” in perfect tempo to the girl’s shifting faery-like footsteps. Suddenly the aged high priest, Pooma Malo, fell prostrate before his tambu idol and began to chant, so great was his fear. ”

“ To-day we come only to make friends."
Then Iko closed his eyes and prayed in the language of the people of Iala.
Turning to his friends when the prayer was over, Tamate said quietly: "Now, we must get aboard as quickly as we possibly can. My plan for a first visit is to come, make friends and get away again swiftly. When we are gone they will talk to one another about us. Next time we come we shall meet friends."
So they walked down through an avenue of armed Papuans to the bank, and got into the canoe again: the paddles flashed as she drove swiftly through the water toward the launch. ”

“ Tamate wished to visit the village of Tepauri. The tribe who lived there were at war with Suau. In the last battle the people of Suau had killed a great [Pg 56] many of the others. Tamate wished to make peace between the two tribes.
One afternoon he said: “I am going to Tepauri to-morrow; will you go with me?” Even Kirikeu refused to go with him.
That evening, as he and Mrs. Chalmers sat at their door, a troop of natives came to them. The dark men carried strange white things in their arms. When they came near they set them down in front of the house. They were skulls! ”

“ God will take care of us. If we die, we die: if we live, we live.”
Then they asked the wives of the teachers. [Pg 50] They were brave too. They said, “Let us live together or die together.”
That night they gathered quietly for evening service in their strange new home. They could not sing lest the sound should bring the natives to attack them. Though the teachers knew English, they were not quite at home in it, so Tamate spoke in Rarotongan, that they might follow every word. ”