changes in samoa—curios—a moonlit scene—saints and fakirs—indians—apia town—vailima—the chief mataaga—a forest ballroom—the wandering scribe—a legend of samoa—an old shellback’s yarns—tuputa and the sinless lands—a tribal waltz
it was some time since i had left samoa. things there seemed to have considerably changed. many of my friends, both natives and white men, had gone away to another island. i went up to mulinuu village, expecting to see my friend raeltoa, the samoan, and to my great regret learnt that his wife had died of consumption and that he had gone away to the line islands, in the equatorial group. robert louis stevenson had died some months before, and was at rest on the top of vaea mountain. indeed with his death the old samoa seemed to have passed away.
i felt rather depressed for a time, but i met an american tourist, staying at the german hotel in apia, who was very eccentric, and he cheered me up considerably. he was a collector of native curios, and his whole life seemed to be centred on his strange hobby. he invited me into his apartments, and i could hardly move for the lumber and his large crates of native pottery, old breech-loading weapons, cutlasses, mummified human heads, dried native feet cut off at the ankles, war-clubs, human teeth and skeletons, native musical instruments and barbarian furniture. he talked of nothing else but his gruesome collection. he had a high, bald head and beak-like nose, whereon he was eternally fingering his pince-nez, which kept falling off whilst he enthusiastically held up relics for my inspection. his passion for getting curios seemed never satisfied. we dined at a native’s house together; suddenly he lifted the cloth and saw that the table was a rough, native-made table of platted cane and bamboo. immediately he bargained for it, and to the native’s delight purchased it, and off we went with it. how he got them all away from the hotel i don’t know, for he had a regular cargo of stuff, but eventually he got his curios on board a steamer and went off to san francisco.
i stayed on in apia for several weeks, joining a party of tourists, and with them i visited the various scenes and islands of the group. as i write, in a dream i see the slopes rising from the sea, lying silent in the moonlight. the curling smoke from the camp fires steals above the still coco-palms that shelter the huts of the native villages. the big, hive-shaped houses are musical with humming melody and the jabbering voices of rough-haired native girls and women. some squat cross-legged by door-holes, whence emerge tiny, brown, naked children, to turn head over heels, or race like joyful puppies after each other round the dens. big full-blooded samoan chiefs smile and show their white teeth as they roll banana-leaf cigarettes between their dusky fingers. across the flat lies apia town with its one main street; beyond the inland plateaux rise, and far off you can see the moonlit waves breaking into patches like white moss on the level ocean plains.
by the copra and coco plantations are the emigrant settlements, where tired coolies, most of them malay indians, rest after their toil. native women linger near them, for they are generous men those coolies, and give the velvet-skinned native girls sham jewellery. the indian sadhu (saint) sits by the line of dens and stores under the palms; he looks like some carved holy image as he stares with bright, unblinking eyes. the natives’ wooden idols have long since been smashed, or have rotted away, and that living idol of the east is one from many cargoes that have arrived to take the place of the old deaf south sea idols. the new idols are real; they have live tongues and eyes that lure on true believers, converts to allah, to do monstrous things. the deaf, dumb wooden gods of heathen times were sanctified compared with these new immigrant idols that breathe!
that old fakir, with outstretched withered arm that brings him reverence and cash, represents hinduism, or buddha. his thick beard is almost solid with filth, where-from at intervals, out to the hot sky, buzz big blow-flies. just across the track is the bazaar, wooden cabins under the mangroves and coco-palms, where the indians sell jewellery, the koran, and richly coloured dress materials to the samoan women. the indians appear fine-looking men when dressed, with their dark, brilliant eyes and curly, close-cropped beards. they swear to all things by the holy prophet mahomet, and wear a poetic smile that enlarges when you are not looking to a sardonic grin! native women meet them at dark under the coco-palms, stroke their beards and gaze secretly up into their faces with passionate admiration.
that pretty samoan girl, with staring, romantic eyes and rough, bronze-coloured hair, who only a week ago gave herself body and soul to some indian, the scum of the east, sits alone under the dark mangroves by the lagoon and thinks and thinks of the day before her fall. a red, decorated loin-cloth reaches to her waist, the forest winds kiss the maiden curves of her brown, flower-like bosom. she is very young: her childhood’s dolls are still unbroken, and are being loved and nursed by her little sisters who live on the neighbouring savaii isle. her father was eaten by a shark last year, and her mother is married to a white man who is never sober.
not far away sit a group of indian women, dark and evil-looking, with round faces. dressed in gorgeous garments of rich yellow and crimson, they are certainly attractive; earrings dangle from their ears and some of them have a silver hoop through the nose. they loll under the coco-palms, whisper viciousness, and mortally hate the handsome samoan girls.
the mail steamer arrived in apia harbour a few hours ago. along the white, dusty, inland track goes the fair, handsome white woman, maria mandy. she is off to her bungalow up the hill, a secluded, romantic spot. her round, pretty face is getting quite sunburnt and brown. by her side walks an aristocratic-looking tourist; he wears pince-nez, is deeply religious and in a great hurry! maria is dressed up to “the nines,” is scented and looks fine and sweet: the “light o’ love” of a score of german naval officers and men of respectable repute, she has grown wealthy and intends to go soon to sydney. with her wit and courtly polish she will get on well in australia, and will probably get into government house society, be extremely virtuous and so shocked that she will suggest the removal from the select clique of such suspicious characters as old colonel b——, who will foam at the mouth and wonder why he is snubbed. mrs s. a. and lady h. b. will go into hysterics, weep, grind their delicate white teeth, look at the ceiling of their bedroom and ask heaven who could possibly have guessed about those intrigues; and they will never dream of the knowing apia harlot—handsome maria mandy.
that fat, thick-necked german official, who likes samoa better than the berlin suburbs, is out walking alone; he is just off to see salvao marva and gaze upon her through those big-rimmed, academic spectacles. he is nearly sixty, and pretty marva is nearly fifteen years old! no one knows about it though. he is a good man at home, plays the austrian zither perfectly, and sings in a deep religious bass voice folk-songs of the fatherland. romantic marva loves those songs, and knows them all by heart; she has a voice like a wild bird, and you do not feel so hard upon the in-auspicious fall of german culture. he is due back in berlin soon, for his time is up in six months, so he is quite safe, and poor marva can place the parental responsibility for her baby on to the back of the beachcomber, bill grimes, who will say, “well i’m blowed, if this ain’t all right,” then accept the position and make his home in the south seas after all.
hongis track, rotorua, n.z.
maria mandy is not the only lady who will become respectable and make the devil rub his hands and chuckle with delight. on the beach stroll other white women, and droves of pretty half-caste girls who will eventually get jobs as “ladies’ maids” to touring families that call at apia on the homeward voyage to new york and london. they have fine times those girls with the german and english sailors, or with “perfect gentlemen,” and sometimes a black-sheep missionary who has been dismissed from the l.m.s. off they go on the spree and forget themselves and do things that make even the beachcomber bill grimes rub his eyes and stare; for, after all, he’s not so bad; he can some day, in that “far-off event of perfect good,” buy a new suit of clothes; but the beachcombers that loaf and eat the fruit of frailty in this eden of the south seas can never buy another soul.
hark! the harbour is musical with voices, for this is fair italy of the southern seas, where natives paddle their canoes and sing their weird melodies as naturally as men breathe. you can hear the splash of the paddles and oars as they cut the thickly star-mirrored water. the native boats are bringing sailors ashore from the ships that arrived at twilight. the moonlit shore and the palm-clad slopes look like fairyland to the silent ships lying out in the harbour. the men step ashore, pay one shilling, or one mark, each, then off go the canoes back to the ships for other crews, as the groups of sailors go up to apia town. before they get there dusky guides offer their services, and they see the sights—such sights too! no missionaries could ever reform such creatures as they see. one of them, she is one of many, wears almost nothing, the curved, thick lips in her wide mouth murmur forth alluring samoan speech. her girth is enormous, and her brown bosom heaves with simulated professional passion, like a wave on the treacherous deep dark ocean of sensuality—whereon so often travelling men are shipwrecked. her eyes are large, the pupils widely encircled with white, and warm with the sunlight gleam of downright wickedness; she has been taught her art in the vast university of experience with white men in the foremost ranks of civilisation’s pioneer tramp! paid vice was never known in samoa till the white men came; but now she lures to her velvety brown arms the unwary innocence of fragile sailormen and tourists who come from london on the civilised thames; where the missionaries hail from, who in our land of purity, of course, cannot exert and bring into play their noble efforts, and so through innocence, o england, my england, your children fall before the lure of the wicked south!
low-caste samoan women are not all hideous; some have large, innocent eyes alive with wonder; half angel and half devil they look as they stand before the camera and, answering the stern voice of the operator, strive to look modest and sweet.
by the edge of the small lagoon, under those tall coco-nut-trees sit four little naked baby girls. it is dark, but their brown faces imaged in the water can be seen by the brilliant moonlight; they look like truant cherubims from paradise out on the spree, as they sit side by side whispering musical samoan baby words, and kissing the rag doll that was made in germany. their samoan father is away in a far village on a visit to a wedding feast; if you listen you can hear the far-off sounds of tom-toms and cymbal-clanging coming across on the drifting forest wind that brings with it odours of wild, decaying flowers and fruit. their mother is fast asleep by the door of their native home close by; she sleeps soundly, and the mongrel dog’s snout is couched softly on her bare, warm, brown breast. it looks a mystical, beautiful world, like some spiritual land beyond the stars, as the bright eyes of those tiny faces peep through the wind-blown palm leaves; and i watch them in my dreams to-night, though long since those little girls are women and now meet the eyes of indian, chinese and european men.
civilisation’s iron foot is on the hills, and along the tracks that lead inland where mission schools and churches stand, to collect on weekdays and sundays the high-class native folk who live in comfortable polynesian homes. the night is hot, starry and almost windless, and handsome samoan youths attired in the lava-lava (loin-cloth) patter swift-footed along the tracks under the coco-nut and tropical trees that shelter the primitive homes of the south sea paradise. samoan girls with wild, bright eyes, round, plump, brown faces, and curved figures as perfect as sculptural art, pass and repass up the forest tracks. they are singing samoan songs that intensify the romantic, dream-like atmosphere of the tropical night—an atmosphere not even to be dispelled by the wailing cry of the native babies, who give short, wild, smothered screams as they lose and then suddenly recover the breasts of sleeping mothers in those thatched homes by the palms and banana groves. the vast night sky, agleam with stars, shines like a mighty mirror. you can see the red glow of the reflection from the volcanic crater miles away on savaii’s isle.
if you go up the slope and stand on the plateau, away inland, when dawn is stealing in grey tints along the ocean horizon, awakening the birds on vaea mountain, and the native homes are astir, you can distinctly see afar something that looks like a cow-shed by coco-palms and thick jungle growth. it is vailima, the home of robert louis stevenson. one light gleams in the large shed-room, and the intellectual, sensitive face of the poet-author moves there in the gloom. he has come back from apia town and is tired, yet secretly as pleased as the two old shellbacks who have carried his curios back, and who hitch up their trousers and cough respectfully as the world-famous author sneaks them in and gives each a bumping glass of the best brand. how quietly his keen eyes gaze upon them as they drink! on a shelf the large clock ticks warningly. he glances at it now and again as the belated sailors yarn on, grow more and more garrulous and continue their strange experiences, that cling to the wonderful, distilling brain of the listener as moonlight clings to deep, dark waters. at last, with intellectual delicacy, they are hurriedly slipped off; for soon the respectable folk, whom he gave the slip to early in the evening, will return, and he must not be seen in such company again. the old shellbacks grip the extended, thin, delicate hand, look into the keen eyes and wipe their mouths as they go down the narrow track. “he’s a gentleman ’e is, d——d if ’e ain’t,” they say to each other, as the silent, lonely man they have just left sits and dreams on alone, and thinks and feels those things that no book ever did, or ever can, tell.
a few miles away lives the great high chief mataafa; he knows tusitala, the writer of tales. mataafa is the old king of samoa: his warriors have charged up those slopes and the sound of the guns from the enemy’s warships echoed and re-echoed across the bay. it is all like some far-off dream to me that in my boyhood i should have met and fiddled to the napoleon of the south seas, for mataafa was exiled, though there the similarity ends. i can still see the handsome, intelligent face and remember the quick, kind eyes of samoa’s dethroned king. i did not know, or at least realise, who mataafa was, as he sat on a chest in the schooner’s cabin in apia harbour. i knew he was someone important by the skipper’s behaviour and respectful attention. only long after did i clearly realise that i was in at the death at one of the most tragic periods of samoa’s history. i helped row the exiled king ashore and went with him to mulinuu village, where i stayed the night, and then rowed him back in the ship’s boat again. had i known the truth i would have clung to the old king with all the romantic vigour of my soul. the opportunity of my boyish dreams had presented itself, but i knew it not. how i would have striven to lean on that chieftain’s right arm, helping in some tragical drama of war and intrigue that would have given me the fame that my boyish aspirations yearned for as i read the novels of alexandre dumas. alas! i can only remember a sad, aged face in a south sea forest homestead, in a schooner’s dingy cabin, or earnestly talking under the forest trees by night to loyal chiefs ere he returned to the ship. i saw him three or four times ashore, and entertained him in the refuge where he lived with his faithful chiefs. also i played the violin to him several times, while he smiled gravely and the garrulous skipper drank whisky and sang out of tune, or read out loudly snatches from the samoan times, which was a paper something after the style in size of the dead bird, published in sydney, but suppressed and issued again as the bird of freedom.
behind the stores in apia’s street is the primeval ballroom where i played the violin to the samoan grandees, and to tripping, white-shoed german officials, while five half-caste girls in pink frocks, with crimson ribbons in their forests of hair, went through the siva dances. robert louis stevenson gazed on, or argued with the crusty german official, who was red in the face as stevenson expressed his opinions on samoan politics. just below too, down the street, is the bar-room, where i played the violin with the manager’s wife, who was a good pianist. i only performed there once: a trader was half-seas over and was arguing with a german official; suddenly he picked my violin up and hit the german over the head with it. there was a great scene and the trader was thrown out. everyone laughed to see the look on my face as i scanned the fiddle to see if it had been damaged; even the manager and his wife put their fists in their mouths to hide a noisy smile. the german shouted: “mein gott! i vill see that this mans be arrested! mein gott! mein gott!”
it’s a lively place, this samoan isle. there sits an aged, tattooed native from motootua village. he is a wandering scribe, a poet and author of the south seas, and well beloved by all his critics, who mostly wear no clothes! he does not write on paper, but engraves on the brains of his audiences his memories, impromptu poems and improvisations; or he tells of samoan history and poetic lore. he wears the primitive ridi to his bony knees and a large shawl of native tappu-cloth round his brown shoulders; tall and majestic-looking, with strong, imaginative face, when he stands quite still and lifts one arm to heaven he looks like an exiled scapegrace god.
with eyes shining brilliantly he tells you the tale of creation, how man- and woman-kind came on earth. ages ago a giant turtle, like a fish that walked on a thousand legs, came up from the bottom of the ocean and saw the blue sky for the first time, and far away the coral reefs and forest-clad shores of samoa. full of excitement, it slashed its tail, swam to the isle and crept ashore. once on dry land it could not move and get back to its native ocean again. the sun blazed on its tremendous back as it crouched and died, and underneath its vast shell a plot of tiny crimson and blue flowers trembled with fear in the sudden darkness that had fallen over them. when the giant turtle was dead its crumbling flesh fed the flowers with moisture, while they cried bitterly at being hidden from the beautiful golden sunlight. when only the shell was left, and the sun was shining beautifully, the flowers peeped out and saw the green hills and coco-palms, and found that they were able to move: out they all ran and tripped up the shore, a delighted flock of laughing faces, and climbed the coco-nut and palm trees—they were samoan girls!
that same night a cloud was leisurely travelling across the clear skies with a cargo of male stars asleep on its breast; and as it passed right over the very spot where the new girls were climbing and clinging to the trees, the high chief of the stars, who was old and grey, looked over the side of the cloud and was astonished, for he saw the girls and at once called loudly to the youthful, sleeping stars, who rubbed their eyes and jumped up. they were beautiful youths with bright faces. “look down there,” said the old, grey star, and all the young stars looked and saw the samoan maidens climbing about the tree-tops. “oh, what shall we do to get down to them?” they all wailed, and the old, grey star said, “ah, you were happy till i awoke you from sleep, but now your passions are awake and you cry aloud for sorrow.” then they all became impatient and fierce, and cried out: “stop the cloud, stop the cloud”; and the old, grey-bearded star sighed and said: “so shall it be.” the moon at once shone out in the sky and the old leader put his hand up to the orb and filled his arms with beautiful moonlight ere he struck the cloud with his magic breath and the thick, dark mist dissolving fell as sparkling rain softly to the isle far below. the bright moonlight clinging to the falling drops made ropes of moonbeams dangle to the forest tree-tops, on which the laughing stars slid as they went down, down—as beautiful youths, to fall into the outstretched arms of the surprised maidens. and that’s how man and woman first came to the samoan isles!
many more were the strange but really poetic tales told by him and by other wandering authors, but their memories and the children of their poetic imaginations are forgotten for ever. i do not think many of the old-time south sea legends have ever been collected and translated, and so they only survive in the biographical writing of men who visited the islands and happened to have retentive memories for such things as poetic lore, and so preserved some of those old fragments of samoan stories, as i have attempted to do from my recollection of many of them.
the lore of the south seas has faded and has been replaced by tragic human drama and rumour. subject matter for three-volume novels is plentiful in samoa; indeed throughout the whole of the south seas you could draw and never drain dry the living fountains of human drama.
peaceful-looking homesteads, clean, religious and happy, abound, but some are tense with passion. by the mission room down at mulinuu lives pretty lavo; she is only sixteen and deeply religious. she loves the handsome white missionary with all her soul, but dares not speak out or confess. eventually he goes away back to his own country, and a few days later they find poor lavo’s body in the lagoon. she looks beautiful even in death, as she still clutches the photograph of the homeward-bound missionary. her native relatives wring their hands and wail; they lay her in the native cemetery just by the plateau, and sing sadly of her childhood till she is forgotten.
a white man was found with the side of his head blown off last night; he arrived at apia a week ago, looking worried and haggard. all evidence of his identity had been destroyed by him, excepting a torn, half-obliterated letter which reads like this:
“my own dear r——. yes, i still love you, and will not believe you did that. i read the full account in this morning’s chronicle. my heart is heavy, dear; give yourself up and face it. oh, my darling, don’t leave the country. i love you, and will die, i am sure, if you go away. meet me to-night at same place. i long to see your poor dear face. god watch over you. yours ever,
e——.”
the german high commissioner kept the revolver that was found by the dead man’s side, and his fat old wife took possession of the photograph that was found on him. she has tacked it up on her bedroom wall; it’s such a nice, happy-looking, girlish face. they buried the suicide in the whites’ cemetery, at the far end, among the “no-name graves.”
on the slopes around apia a few emigrants from far-off countries live in comfortable bungalows. they are happy with their wives and children. their memory of the cities and turmoil of the old country is sweeter for the dreaming distance; they were a bit homesick at first, but now they have become contented and love the new peaceful surroundings, and look forward to the arrival of the mails. they still suffer, though, with the unrestful disease of the far-away suburban towns of advanced civilisation, and so cannot sleep for wondering who the strange couple are who rent the solitary bungalow on the edge of the forest up in the hills. it is quite evident that the new-comer is a gentleman, for he speaks well and has polished ways, but his wife talks like a servant-girl; she’s pretty, though. they arrived suddenly in apia, and three months after the baby was born. he seems very fond of the baby, and the mother too, but he often gets very despondent. he’s a handsome man and does not look a bit practical; indeed he looks as though for the sake of affection and his word he would sacrifice all ambition and leave the world behind him. he seems to hate respectable people, and only goes down to the apia bar-rooms to mix with old sailors and traders and the remnants of the beach; he stands treat and is a godsend to them, for he seems to have plenty of cash. one old shellback entertains him for hours with wonderful tales of other days, and his comrades sit by and silently smoke and drink as the bar becomes hazy with tobacco smoke. the lights grow dim as the old sailor’s yarn rolls the world back, and in the now romantic atmosphere of the bar shades of old pioneers dance ghostly wise; old schooners and slave galleons are anchored in the harbour; you can hear the laughter and song of dead sailors and traders. they are dancing jigs, their sea-boots shuffle, under the coco-palms just outside the bar-room, the bright eyes of dark native girls shine as they whirl clinging to their arms: how they welcome the white men from the far-away western world—the men whose ships long ago died down the seaward sunsets, and faded away beyond the sky-line into time’s silent sea ere our generation was born.
out on the promontory sits the high chief tuputo in his homestead. he has a noble, wrinkled, tattooed face, and, though he belongs to the old school, he wears glasses. the lizard slips across his moonlit floor, and through his door he can see the silvered waves and the wind-stirred coco-nut trees twinkling by the barrier reefs; the waves are breaking and wailing as they wailed and broke in his childhood. he has been a sailor in the south seas; he remembers tribal wars in fiji and samoa and has refused many invitations to secret cannibalistic festivals. now he sits reading the english newspapers, for long ago they taught him to read english, and he is a staunch catholic. often he reads and wonders over the terrible crimes that are reported in the police news of his late-dated london newspapers. he had once, long ago, thought that england and new york were sinless lands ethereal with christian dreams, imparadised cities, their spires glittering in the sunlight of the golden age. if not, why did missionaries leave them to come across the big seas to samoa, and all the isles of the southern seas?
the great world war has not commenced yet, but even now his withered hands itch to clutch his disused war-club and sally forth to take revenge on those white men who laugh at his majestic bearing; those men who stole his isles and brought rum and vice to contaminate the virtue of his race. how spiteful will he feel when he wipes his spectacles, and, astonished, reads the truth! but then he will cool down, look at his innocent old war-club on his homestead wall and offer his humble services for the vast tribalistic war clash in the white man’s lands, while thakambau and tano, the cannibal kings, and ritova and king naulivan, who never heard the word culture, sigh and turn in their graves to think that they are dead, while the very world is trembling with glorious, bloodthirsty battle. ah, well, their children’s children are coming to help us: may the old thakambau spirit still be alive in their blood to help the advance of culture—the civilisation of sad humanity. let us hope, too, that our semi-savage allies will not eat the fallen foe! but i must proceed with my own wanderings, for i have a long way to travel yet.
samoa still rises silently in moonlight out of the sea of my dreams. i can hear the barbarian orchestra clanging away down in the native village, as samoan girls and youths, and two or three white men, waltz under the palms just below the plateau, where groves of orange-trees hang their golden fruit amongst dark leaves. as i play the violin the semi-savage people whirl to the wild rhythm of the forest ballroom music of a tribal waltz.
