White Shadows in the South Seas Part 13

Away up here, hidden in the depths of the forest, there were three or four houses; not the blue-painted or whitewashed cabins of the settlement, but half-open native cots, with smoke rising from the fire made in a circle of stones on the _paepaes_. The hour of sleep had pa.s.sed, and squatted before the troughs men and women mashed the _ma_ for the _popoi_, or idled on the platform in red and yellow _pareus_, watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only remnants of the native architecture.

As I drew nearer, I saw that I had stumbled upon such a house as the Marquesan had known in the days of his strength, when pride of artistry had created wonderful and beautiful structures of native wood adorned in elegant and curious patterns.

It was erected upon a _paepae_ about ten feet high, reached by a broad and smooth stairway of similar ma.s.sive black rocks. The house, long and narrow, covered all of the _paepae_ but a veranda in front, the edge of which was fenced with bamboo ingeniously formed into patterns of squares. A friendly call of "_Kaoha!_" in response to mine, summoned me to the family meeting-place, and I mounted the steps with eagerness.

I was met by a stalwart and handsome savage, in earrings and necklace and scarlet _pareu_, who rubbed my nose with his and smelled me ceremoniously, welcoming me as an honored guest. Several women followed his example, while naked children ran forward curiously to look at the stranger.

Learning the interest and admiration I felt for his house, my host displayed it with ill-concealed pride. Its frame was of the largest-sized bamboos standing upright, and faced with hibiscus strips, all lashed handsomely and strongly with _faufee_ cordage.

Upon this framework were set the walls, constructed of canes arranged in a delicate pattern, the fastenings being of _purau_ or other rattan-like creepers, all tied neatly and regularly. As the residence was only about a dozen feet deep, through three times that length, these walls were not only attractive but eminently serviceable, the canes shading the interior, and the interstices between them admitting ample light and air.

We entered through a low opening and found the one long chamber s.p.a.cious, cool, and perfumed with the forest odors. There were no furnishings save two large and brilliantly polished cocoanut-tree trunks running the whole length of the interior, and between them piles of mats of many designs and of every bright hue that roots and herbs will yield.

While I admired these, noting their rich colors and soft, yet firm, texture, a murmurous rustle on the palm-thatched roof announced the coming of the rain. It was unthinkable to my host that a stranger should leave his house at nightfall, and in a downpour that might become a deluge before morning. To have refused his invitation had been to leave a pained and bewildered household.

_Popoi_ bowls and wooden platters of the roasted breadfruit were brought within shelter, and while the hissing rain put out the fires on the _paepae_ the candlenuts were lighted and all squatted for the evening meal. Breadfruit and yams, with a draught of cocoanut milk, satisfied the hunger created by my arduous climb. Then the women carried away the empty bowls while my host and I lay upon the mats and smoked, watching the gray slant of the rain through the darkening twilight.

Few houses like his remained on Hiva-Oe, he said in reply to my compliments. The people loved the ways of the whites and longed for homes of redwood planks and roofs of iron. For himself, he loved the ways of his fathers, and though yielding as he must to the payments of taxes and the authority of new laws, he would not toil in the copra-groves or work on traders' ships. His father had been a warrior of renown. The _u'u_ was wielded no more, being replaced by the guns of the whites. The old songs were forgotten. But he, who had traveled far, who had seen the capital of the world, Tahiti, and had learned much of the ways of the foreigner, would have none of them. He would live as his fathers had lived, and die as they had died.

"It is not long. We vanish like the small fish before the hunger of the _mako_. The High Places are broken, and the _pahue_ covers our _paepaes_. It does not matter. _E tupu te fau; e toro to farero, e mou te taata._ The hibiscus shall grow, the coral shall spread, and man shall cease. There is sleep on your eyelids, and the mats are ready."

His hospitality would give me the place of honor, despite my protests, and soon I found myself lying between my host and his wife, while the other members of the household lay in serried rank beyond her on the mats that filled the hollow between the palm-trunks. All slept with the backs of their heads upon one timber, and the backs of their knees over the other, but I found comfort on the soft pile between them. My companions slumbered peacefully, as I have remarked that men do in all countries where the people live near, and much in, the sea. There was no snoring or groaning, no convulsive movement of arms or legs, no grimaces or frowns such as mark the fitful sleep of most city dwellers and of all of us who worry or burn the candle at both ends.

I lay listening for some time to their quiet breathing and the sound of rain drumming on the thatch, but at last my eyes closed, and only the dawn awoke me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Splitting cocoanut husks in copra making process]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cutting the meat from cocoanuts to make copra]

CHAPTER XIII

The household of Lam Kai Oo; copra making; marvels of the cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that knows the laws of gravitation.

Next morning, after bidding farewell to my hosts, I set out down the mountain in the early freshness of a sunny, rain-washed morning. I followed a trail new to me, a path steep as a stairway, walled in by the water-jeweled jungle pressing so close upon me that at times I saw the sky only through the interlacing fronds of the tree-ferns above my head.

I had gone perhaps a mile without seeing any sign of human habitation, hearing only the conversation of the birds and the mult.i.tudinous murmuring of leaves, when a heavy shower began to fall. Pressing on, hampered by my clinging garments and slipping in the path that had instantly become a miniature torrent, I came upon a little clearing in which stood a dirty, dark shanty, like a hovel in the outskirts of Canton, not raised on a _paepae_ but squat in an acre of mud and the filth of years.

Two children, three or four years old, played naked in the muck, and Flower, of the red-gold hair, reputed the wickedest woman in the Marquesas, ironed her gowns on the floor of the porch. Raising her head, she called to me to come in.

This was the house of Lam Kai Oo, the adopted father of Flower.

Seventy-one years old, Lam Kai Oo had made this his home since he left the employ of Captain Hart, the unfortunate American cotton planter, and here he had buried three native wives. His fourth, a woman of twenty years, sat in the shelter of a copra shed nursing a six-months' infant. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were dark blue, almost black, a characteristic of nursing mothers here.

Both the mother and Flower argued with me that I should make Many Daughters my wife during my stay in Atuona, and if not the leper la.s.s, then another friend they had chosen for me. Flower herself had done me the honor of proposing a temporary alliance, but I had persuaded her that I was not worthy of her beauty and talents. Any plea that it was not according to my code, of even that it was un-Christian, provoked peals of laughter from all who heard it; sooth to say, the whites laughed loudest.

Beneath a thatch of palm-leaves Lam Kai Oo was drying cocoanuts. His withered yellow body straddled a kind of bench, to which was fixed a sharp-pointed stick of iron-wood. Seizing each nut in his claw-like hands, he pushed it against this point, turning and twisting it as he ripped off the thick and fibrous husk. Then he cracked each nut in half with a well-directed blow of a heavy knife. For the best copra-making, the half-nuts should be placed in the sun, concave side up. As the meats begin to dry, they shrink away from the sh.e.l.l and are readily removed, being then copra, the foundation of the many toilet preparations, soaps and creams, that are made from cocoa-oil.

As it rains much in the Marquesas, the drying is often done in ovens, though sun-dried copra commands a higher price. Lam Kai Oo was operating such an oven, a simple affair of stones cemented with mud, over which had been erected a shed of palm-trunks and thatch. The halved cocoanuts were placed in cups made of mud and laid on wooden racks above the oven. With the doors closed, a fire was built in the stone furnace and fed from the outside with cocoa-husks and brush.

Such an oven does not dry the nuts uniformly. The smoke turns them dark, and oil made from them contains undesirable creosote.

Hot-water pipes are the best source of heat, except the sun, but Lam Kai Oo was paying again for his poverty, as the poor man must do the world over.

Forty-four years earlier he had left California, after having given seven years of his life to building American railways. The smoke of the Civil War had hardly cleared away when Captain Hart had persuaded him, Ah Yu and other California Chinese to come to Hiva-oa, and put their labor into his cotton plantations. Cannibalism was common at that date. I asked the old man if he had witnessed it.

"My see plenty fella eatee," he replied. "Kanaka no likee Chineeman.

Him speak bad meatee."

He told me how on one occasion the Lord had saved him from drowning.

With a lay brother of the Catholic Mission, he had been en route to Vait-hua in a canoe with many natives. There was to be a church feast, and Lam Kai Oo was carrying six hundred Chile _piastres_ to back his skill against the natives in gambling; Lam, of course, to operate the wheel of supposed chance.

The boat capsized in deep water. The lay brother could not swim, but was lifted to the keel of the upturned boat, while the others clung to its edges. He prayed for hours, while the others, lifting their faces above the storming waves, cried hearty amens to his supplications. Finally the waves washed them into shallow water. The brother gave earnest thanks for deliverance, but Lam thought that the same magic should give him back the six hundred pieces of silver that had gone into the sea.

"My savee plenty Lord helpee you," said he. "Allee samee, him h.e.l.l to live when poor. Him Lord catchee Chile money, my givee fitty dolla churchee."

He sighed despairingly, and fed more cocoa-husks to his make-shift oven. The shower had pa.s.sed, moving in a gray curtain down the valley, and picking my way through the mire of the yard, I followed it in the sunshine.

My way led now through the cocoanut-groves that day and night make the island murmurous with their rustling. They are good company, these lofty, graceful palms, and I had grown to feel a real affection for them, such as a man has for his dog. Like myself, they can not live and flourish long unless they see the ocean. Their habit has more tangible reason than mine; they are dependent on air and water for life. The greater the column of water that flows daily up their stems and evaporates from the leaves, the greater the growth and productivity.

Evaporation being in large measure dependent on free circulation of air, the best sites for cocoanut plantations are on the seash.o.r.e, exposed to the winds. They love the sea and will grow with their boles dipped at high tide in the salt water.

These trunks, three feet in diameter at the base and tapering smoothly and perfectly to perhaps twelve inches at the top, are in reality no more than pipes for conveying the water to the thirsty fronds. Cut them open, and one finds a vast number of hollow reeds, held together by a resinous pitch and guarded by a bark both thick and exceedingly hard. There is no branch or leaf except at the very tip of the trunk, where a symmetrical and gigantic bouquet of leaves appears, having plumes a dozen feet long or more, that nod with every zephyr and in storms sway and lash the tree as if they were living things.

I used to wonder why these great leaves, the sport of the idlest breeze as well as the fiercest gale, were not torn from the tree, but when I learned to know the cocoanut palm as a dear friend I found that nature had provided for its survival on the wind-swept beaches with the same exquisite attention to individual need that is shown in the electric batteries and lights of certain fishes, or in the caprification of the fig. A very fine, but strong, matting, attached to the bark beneath the stalk, fastened half way around the tree and reaching three feet up the leaf, fixes it firmly to the trunk but gives it ample freedom to move. It is a natural brace, pliable and elastic.

There is scarcely a need of the islander not supplied by these amiable trees. Their wood makes the best spars, furnishes rafters and pillars for native houses, the knee- and head-rests of their beds, rollers for the big canoes or whale-boats, fences against wild pig, and fuel. The leaves make screens and roofs of dwellings, baskets, and coverings, and in the pagan temples of Tahiti were the rosaries or prayer-counters, while on their stiff stalks the candlenuts are strung to give light for feasts or for feasting. When the tree is young the network that holds the leaves is a beautiful silver, as fine as India paper and glossy; narrow strips of it are used as hair ornaments and contrast charmingly with the black and shining locks of the girls. When older, this matting has every appearance of coa.r.s.e cotton cloth, and is used to wrap food, or is made into bags and even rough garments, specially for fishermen.

The white flowers are small and grow along a branching stalk, protected by a sheath, and just above the commencement of the leaf.

From them is made the cocoanut-brandy that enables the native to forget his sorrows. Flowers and nuts in every stage of development are on the same tree, a year elapsing between the first blossom and the ripe nut. Long before it is ripe, but after full size has been attained, the nut contains a pint or even a quart of delicious juice, called milk, water, or wine, in different languages. It is clear as spring water, of a delicate acidity, yet sweet, and no idea of its taste can be formed from the half-rancid fluid in the ripe nuts sold in Europe or America. It must be drunk soon after being taken from the tree to know its full delights, and must have been gathered at the stage of growth called _koie_, when there is no pulp within the sh.e.l.l.

Not long after this time the pulp, white as snow, of the consistency and appearance of the white of a soft-boiled egg, forms in a thin layer about the walls of the nut. This is a delicious food, and from it are made many dishes, puddings, and cakes. It is no more like the shredded cocoanut of commerce than the peach plucked from the tree is like the tinned fruit.

The pulp hardens and thickens as time goes on, and finally is an inch in thickness. Occasionally the meat when hard and ripe is broiled and eaten. I like it fairly well served in this fashion.

If left on the tree, the nut will in time fall, and in due course there begins in it a marvelous process of germination. A sweet, whitish sponge forms in the interior, starting from the inner end of the seed enclosed in the kernel, opposite one of the three eyes in the smaller end of the nut. This sponge drinks up all the liquid, and, filling the inside, melts the hard meat, absorbs it, and turns it into a cellular substance, while a white bud, hard and powerful, pushes its way through one of the eyes of the sh.e.l.l, bores through several inches of husk, and reaches the air and light.

This bud now unfolds green leaves, and at the same period two other buds, beginning at the same point, find their way to the two other eyes and pierce them, turning down instead of up, and forcing their way through the former husk outside the sh.e.l.l, enter the ground.

Though no knife could cut the sh.e.l.l, the life within bursts it open, and husk and sh.e.l.l decay and fertilize the soil beside the new roots, which, within five or six years, have raised a tree eight or nine feet high, itself bearing nuts to reproduce their kind again.

All about me on the fertile soil, among decaying leaves and luxuriant vines, I saw these nuts, carrying on their mysterious and powerful life in the unheeded forest depths. Here and there a half-domestic pig was harrying one with thrusting snout. These pigs, which we think stupid, know well that the sun will the sooner cause a sprouting nut to break open, and they roll the fallen nut into the sunlight to hasten their stomachs' gratification, though with sufficient labor they can get to the meat with their teeth.

There is a crab here, too, that could teach even the wisest, sun-employing pig some tricks in economics. He is the last word in adaptation to environment, with an uncanny knowledge that makes the uninformed look askance at the tale-teller. These crabs climb cocoanut-trees to procure their favorite food. They dote on cocoanuts, the ripe, full-meated sort. They are able to enjoy them by various endeavors demanding strength, cleverness, an apparent understanding of the effect of striking an object against a harder one, and of the velocity caused by gravity. Nuts that resist their attempts to open them, they carry to great heights, to drop them and thus break their sh.e.l.ls.

These crabs are called by the scientists _Birgos latro_, by the Marquesans _tupa_, by the Paumotans _kaveu_, and by the Tahitians, _ua vahi haari_. It was a never-failing entertainment on my walks in the Paumotas to observe these great creatures, light-brown or reddish in color, more than two feet in length, stalking about with their bodies a foot from the ground, supported by two pairs of central legs. They can exist at least twenty-four hours without visiting the water, of which they carry a supply in reservoirs on both sides of the cephalothorax, keeping their gills moist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Marquesan home on a _paepae_]