Ousia

“ Eimeo, or, as the natives usually call it, Morea, is the nearest to Otaheite, its distance from the western coast being only about four leagues.--It is reckoned ten miles long, from north to south, and half as much in breadth. It has several harbours, and is intersected by considerable valleys of a fertile appearance. The natives, who are at present dependent on Otaheite, are said to be as much addicted to thieving as those of that island. The women are inferior in attractions to any in their neighbourhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We also got here good store of refreshments, both in hogs and vegetables; that is, bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts; little else being in season. I do not know that there is any difference between the produce of this island and of Otaheite; but there is a very striking difference in their women that I can by no means account for. Those of Eimeo are of low stature, have a dark hue, and, in general, forbidding features. If we met with a fine woman among them, we were sure, upon enquiry, to find that she had come from some other island. ”

“ This is what appeared to me to be the then state of Otaheite. The other islands, that is, Huaheine, Ulietea, and Otaha, were in a more flourishing state than they were when I was there before. Since that time, they had enjoyed the blessing of peace; the people seemed to be as happy as any under heaven; and well they may, for they possess not only the necessaries, but many of the luxuries of life in the greatest profusion; and my young man told me that hogs, fowls, and fruits, are in equal plenty at Bola-bola, a thing which Tupia would never allow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ocean broke angrily against the stern basalt, or entered these huge pits and sprang out of them in welling masses of foam and spray. An iron-bound coast that defied the heart, or any sentiment but wonder and fear. Boulders as big as ships were half attached to the precipices or lay near-by to attest the continuous devouring of the land by the sea. Coming from Tahiti, with its beautiful reefs and beaches, and the clouds like wreaths of reva-reva, with cocoanut-palms and breadfruit-trees and bananas covering all the land, this Easter Island seemed terribly bare and forbidding. ”

“ On approaching the Hawaiian group from the north, the first land which is sighted is the island of Oahu, and soon after we pass along the windward shores of Maui and Molokai, doubling the lofty promontory of Diamond Head, which rears its precipitous front seven hundred feet above [Pg 14] the sea. We arrive at the dawn of day, while the rising sun beautifies the mountain tops, the green slopes, the gulches, and fern-clad hills, which here and there sparkle with silvery streamlets. ”

“ And now, cultivating their lands in the valleys back of Keauhou, and living contentedly and without fear of molestation, we will leave the little colony for a time and refer to another important character in the story we are telling—Kamapuaa, the traditional monster of Oahu, whose deeds so aggrandize the [142] folk-lore of that island. In some meles he is depicted as a hog with a human head, and in others as a being with a human form and head of a hog; but in all he is described as a monster of prodigious bulk and malicious and predatory propensities. ”

“ The language of Otaheite has many words, and even phrases, quite unlike those of the islands to the westward of it, which all agree; and this island is remarkable for producing great quantities of that delicious fruit we call apples, which are found in none of the others, except Eimeo. It has also the advantage of producing an odoriferous wood, called eahoi, which is highly valued at the other isles, where there is none; nor even in the south-east peninsula, or Tiaraboo, though joining it. ”

“ The island of Oahu, upon which Honolulu is situated, is third in size but contains the largest population, almost sixty thousand, of which forty thousand dwell in or near the capital. The islands are so small and surrounded by such an area of water as to remind one of a toy land, and yet there are great mountains there, one piercing the clouds at a height of 14,000 feet. Immense cane fields stretch as far as the eye can reach, and busy people of different colors and races make a large annual addition to our country's wealth. ”

“ We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels every week. Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge of this county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal, and not extended to the continent southward, if they do at first come at all from the northern parts of this island only, and not from the north of Europe. Come from whence they will, it is plain, from the fearless disregard that they show for men or guns, that they have been little accustomed to places of much resort. ”

“ At Ulietea they cultivate great quantities of this plant. At Otaheite but very little. I believe there are but few islands in this sea, that do not produce more or less of it; and the natives apply it to the same use, as appears by Le Mair's account of Horn Island, in which he speaks of the natives making a liquor from a plant in the same manner as above mentioned.
Great injustice has been done the women of Otaheite, and the Society isles, by those who have represented them, without exception, as ready to grant the last favour to any man who will come up to their price. ”

“ I went off again; and the next time I came round, it was cool and starry night, and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.
We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse must have succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his hatch cover drifted ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the natives of the atoll for a week, when we were rescued by the French cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In the meantime, however, we had performed the ceremony of exchanging names. In the South Seas such a ceremony binds two men closer together than blood brothership. ”

“ Somewhere on the coast there is an old battlefield where countless human bones still whiten; and on the rocky coast to the south can be seen in shallow water the ruins of miles of ancient fish ponds equaled nowhere in the group. To the northwest Oahu disturbs the horizon, cloud-capped and shimmering in the blue; while Haleakala bulks ten thousand feet in air on Maui to the east.
This ranch home is buried in flowers, and my unbelief in begonias a dozen feet high underwent rude check. A fairy forest of these surrounds the guest cottage, casting a rosy shadow on window and lanai. ”

“ Considerably more than half the species occur in the island of Oahu, where there is a good deal of forest. Very few shells belonging to other groups occur, and they are all small and obscure; the Achatinellæ almost monopolising the entire archipelago. ”

“ At two o'clock we saw Diamond Head, the easternmost headland of Oahu, rising from the sea. By four o'clock we were abreast of it, and steaming along the coast. The cape itself rises grandly from the midst of a grove of cocoa-nuts, and the shore all along, with the sharp high mountains of the Pali as a background, is fine and picturesque. A coral reef stretches far into the sea, and outside this we lay waiting for a pilot to take us into Honolulu Harbour. ”

“ At Otahite again where either from frequent wars or other accidents many of the most ancient families are extinct they have tried to make them as elegant and expensive as possible, of which sort is that of Oamo describd in the Journal of going round the Island.
Besides their Gods each Island has a Bird to which the Title of Eatua or God is given, for instance Ulietea has the Heron and Bola Bola a kind of Kingfisher; these birds are held in high respect and by no means killd or molested. They are thought to be givers of Good or Bad fortune but no kind of Worship is offerd to them. ”

“ As we approached the dock, we forgot to watch the frolicking porpoises and the silver flying fish, at sight of the daring natives on their boards riding the surf that broke over the coral reef. The only familiar face we saw on the wharf as we landed was Mr. George Carter, a friend of my husband's, who has since been Governor of the Islands.
Oahu is a beautiful island, and the town of Honolulu at once casts its spell upon you, with the luxuriance of its tropical gardens. ”

“ Jack keeps repeating that he cannot understand why it is not thronged with tourists, and calls it the garden of the world. We have seen nothing like it in America or Europe. And yet Oahu is not generally spoken of as by any means the most beautiful of the Hawaiian Islands. Instead, both residents and visitors rave over the “Garden Isle,” Kauai, the Kona coast of Hawaii and that Big Island’s gulches, the wonders of Maui with its Iao Valley and Haleakala, “The House of the Sun.” What must they all be, say we, if these persons have not been stirred by Windward Oahu! ”

“ Men who stayed too long in the South Seas became natural, simple children of the sweet soil, or decayed and rejected, rotten fruit of civilization when unsuited to assimilation.
A week after Lemoal had poisoned my mind with his intimation, I met Mademoiselle Narbonne at Otupotu, the divide between the valleys of Atuona and Taaoa, where Kahuiti, the magnificent cannibal of Taaoa, had trapped the Mouth of God’s grandfather and eaten him. It was a precipice facing the valleys of the island of Hiva-Oa, as it curved eastward. ”

“ There is a circle of agreeable society, too; not alone with foreign merchants and consuls, but with a higher order of diplomatic agents, who, although severed from their homes by thousands of leagues of water, still surround themselves with all the elegancies and enjoyments of social existence which they have known in their native lands. Indeed Oahu, though without the salubrious, agreeable climate of Maui, is still a place of much interest; and from its delightful position, and fine scenery, well worthy of all the commendation that voyagers bestow upon it. ”

“ Auwae has a loved playmate, Upa, a boy a little older than herself. He goes with the party to the beach. Carrying their surf-boards under their arms, the two children hurry ahead to the beach of shining white coral sand. Look! The broad Pacific now stretches out before their eyes. How blue are the waters, reaching out in the distance till they seem to meet a sky just as blue and clear of a passing cloud! How the hot sunshine beats down upon the sand! Yet Auwae does not seem to mind it. ”

“ The island of Oahu was sighted at nine, and shortly afterward we headed into Molokai Channel, said to be one of the deepest places in the Pacific Ocean, and, in the matter of baffling winds and waves and currents, undoubtedly one of the most treacherous and uncertain, as we were to learn on the return voyage. A strong breeze increased to a half gale by noon, and under double-reefed main and foresails the yacht made not any too good weather of it in the vicious cross tumble of waters that assailed her. ”

“ Slowly we crept into the wide Bay of Traitors and felt our way into the anchorage of Taha-Uka, a long and narrow passage between frowning cliffs, spray-dashed walls of granite lashed fiercely by the sea. All along the bluffs were cocoanut-palms, magnificent, waving their green fronds in the breeze. Darker green, the mountains towered above them, and far on the higher slopes we saw wild goats leaping from crag to crag and wild horses running in the upper valleys. ”

“ On the 12th, old Oberea, the woman who, when the Dolphin was here in 1767, was thought to be queen of the island, and whom I had not seen since 1769, paid us a visit, and brought a present of hogs and fruit. Soon after came Otoo, with a great retinue, and a large quantity of provisions. I was pretty liberal in my returns, thinking it might be the last time I should see these good people, who had so liberally relieved our wants ”

“ At noon to-day we came to anchor at Ulhietea, in a bay called by the natives Oapoa, the entrance of which is very near a small islet called Owhattera. Some Indians soon came on board, expressing signs of fear. There were two canoes, each of which brought a woman, I suppose, as a mark of confidence, and a pig as a present. To each of these ladies was given a spike-nail and some beads, with which they seemed much pleased. Tupia, who has always expressed much fear of the men of Bola-Bola, says that they have conquered this island, and will to-morrow come down and fight with us ”

“ The island is long and narrow, but with the same irregular mountain structure, the same vegetation and the same contrast of wet and dry on the opposite coasts. We may remember that Ovalau, off the coast of Viti Levu, was much concerned in the past with the politics of the neighbouring mainland; the same was true of Taveuni off Vanua Levu. The dwellers on the rich coastlands of the larger islands led a very uncertain life between the raiders from the sea and the wild tribes of the interior. The sea was always the more important factor in the life of the whole group of islands ”