It was the hot season, but not too hot for riding or driving, and I spent many mornings exploring about the island. To the Wood of the Bats, about eleven miles from Nukualofa, one drives in a springy little colonial buggy, driving over mile after mile of rather uneven grass road, along avenues of blossoming orange trees, through groves of bananas and breadfruit and tall mango trees, past straggling native villages with neat little fancy-work houses made of woven reeds and thatch, until, in the distance, one begins to hear a loud screaming, squeaking, and chattering noise. This is the Wood of the Bats that we are coming to, and that is some of their usual conversation. Under the trees—there are over twenty of them, avavas, like great cedars, ironwoods, mangoes; all big forest trees, and all covered with bats as thick as a currant bush with currants—the squeaking and squealing grows almost deafening, Thousands of great flying-foxes, with dark furry bodies as big as cats, big spreading wings (now folded tightly up) and sharp, keen fox-like heads, hang upside down on every tree, waiting for the night to come, and whiling away the time by quarrelling and swearing. They are all bad, these bats; they axe ugly, dirty, vicious, destructive and greedy—yet they are strictly tabooed by the natives, and no one dares to kill a single one. It is believed that the prosperity of Tonga is inextricably associated with the bats, and that, if they ever deserted the wood, the country would fall. They are sacred, and must not be touched.

Every evening, punctually at five o’clock, the bats take wing, and rise from the trees like a screaming cloud of evil spirits. The sky is blackened with their bodies as they go, and scattered all over with the long streaming flights of separate bats that divide away from the main body. They are off to feed—to feed all night upon the bananas and pineapples and mangoes of the unhappy islanders, who lose thousands of pounds’ worth of fruit and trade every year, but dare not revenge themselves. Just at dawn, they will return, screaming and shoving rudely as they settle down in the trees once more, squabbling for upper berths, and trying to push into a nice comfortable place amidships of a particular bough, by biting the occupant’s toes until he lets go. They may have flown forty or fifty miles in the night, visited islands more than twenty miles away, and devastated the plantations of Tonga from end to end. They have worked hard for their suppers, and now they will doze and squabble all day, once more, until evening.

A few miles from the Wood of Bats, in the midst of exquisite scenery, stands a famous avava known as Captain Cook’s Tree. It was under this tree that the great explorer called together all the natives, on his discovery of the islands in 1777, and addressed them by means of an interpreter. The account of this will be found in “Cook’s Voyages.” The tree is still in splendid condition, in spite of its age, which must amount to many hundred years. Pigs were brought to Tonga by Cook in this same year, and a few of the original breed are still to be seen in the island—tall, gaunt, hump-backed creatures with immense heads and long noses, contrasting oddly with the smaller and fatter kinds introduced by later voyagers.

The burial-place of the Tui Tongans made an object for another drive. Before the introduction of Christianity, in early Victorian days, the Tongans had two kings, an ordinary earthly king, who did all the hard work of governing, and a heavenly king, the Tui Tonga, who was supposed to be of divine descent, and was worshipped as a god. For many centuries, the Tui Tongas were buried in great oblong raised enclosures, three-terraced, and built of rough-hewn, closely fitted slabs from the coral reef. Two of these great tombs still remain, hidden in tangled thickets of low bush, and considerably worn by age. I had no means of measurement, but judged the larger one to be about fifty yards by thirty, the smaller somewhat less. The state of the coral slabs, and the great trees that have grown up rooted among them, suggest that the tombs are extremely old. Tradition among the natives takes them back beyond the recollection of any of their ancestors; they cannot say when or why they were built. The construction—a double terrace, each step about five feet high—and the carefully arranged oblong shape, seem to point to some special significance long since forgotten. There is also a “trilithon” erection of three large blocks of stone, some miles away, concerning which island traditions are silent. It could not have been constructed by hand labour alone; some mechanical device must have been employed to raise the centre stone to its present position. The ancient Tongans, however, knew nothing of mechanics, and an interesting problem is therefore set for antiquarians to solve. The height of the side supports is about twenty feet, and the centre cross-piece, which rests in a socket on each side, is a little less in length.

The beautiful and interesting sea-caves—some swarming with birds, others celebrated for their lovely colouring and formation—which are found in the windward side of the island, I was unable to see, owing to the bad weather of the rainy season, during which my visit was made.

A “Chief” kava-party, however, got up for my benefit, consoled me for the loss of the caves. Kava is the great national drink of Tonga, as of many other South Sea islands. It is made from the hard woody root of the Piper methysticum and is exhilarating and cooling, but not actually intoxicating. In taste, it is extremely unpleasant till one gets used to it, being peppery, soapy, and dish-watery as to flavour. I had drunk kava before, however, and learned to recognise its pleasanter properties; also, the old custom of chewing the kava-root, before infusing it, which still obtains in some parts of Samoa, has been quite given up in Tonga, and the pounding is done with stones.

The scene was weird and strange in the last degree. I was the only white person present. We all squatted on the mats in the chief’s house, the natives in their valas and loose short gowns, with white scented flowers in their hair; I in a smart demi-toilette evening dress, because I was the special guest, and the chief’s family would expect me to honour them by “dressing the part.” The only light was a ship’s hurricane lantern, placed on the floor, where it threw the most Rembrandtesque of shadows upon the silent circle of brown, glittering-eyed faces, and upon the rapt ecstatic countenances of the kava-makers, as they went through all the details of what was evidently an ancient religious ceremony, very savage, very native, and not at all “missionary,” despite the church membership of all the performers. There were loud sonorous chants and responses, elaborate gymnastics, with the great twist of hibiscus fibre that was used to strain the kava after it was pounded, and water poured on; something very like incantations, and finally, a wild religious ecstasy on the part of the kava-maker, who worked himself almost into a fit, and at last sank back utterly exhausted, with the bowl of prepared kava before him. This bowl was a standing vessel as big as a round sponge bath, carved, legs and all, from one block of a huge forest tree-trunk, and exquisitely polished and enamelled, by many years of kava-holding. Its value was beyond price.

The calling of names now began—first the chief’s, then mine, then the other guests. There is great ceremony observed at kava-drinkings, and an order of precedence as strict as that of a German Court. As my name was called, I clapped my hands once, took the cocoanut bowl from the girl who was serving it, and swallowed the contents at a draught. The next name was then called, and the next drinker drank as I did. It is very bad manners to act otherwise. The girl who served the kava walked round our squatting circle in a doubled-up posture that must surely have made her back ache; but custom forbade her to stand erect while serving.

After the long ceremony was ended, the dignified white-haired chief held a conversation with me, by means of an interpreter; and told me that there were four ways of kava-drinking, each with its appropriate etiquette.

That which I had seen was the most important and elaborate of the four, very seldom used, and only permitted to chiefs. We exchanged a good many stately compliments through the interpreter, and I then took my departure.

It is near the end of my visit, and in a few more days, the steamer takes me on to Haapai and Vavau and beautiful, steamy-hot Samoa. But this is Christmas morning, and one can think of nothing else.

Nothing? Well, those who know what it is to spend that day of days under a burning tropic sky, with palms and poinsettia for Christmas garlandry, instead of holly and mistletoe, know just what thoughts fly homewards across twelve thousand miles of sea, and how far they are concerned with the sunny, lonely Christmas of the present—how far with the dark and stormy Christmases of the past, when snow and winter reigned outside, but summer, more brilliant than all the splendours of southern world, was within, and in the heart. But it is of the Tongan Christmas day that I have to tell.

I was awakened very early by—the waits! Whatever one expects under the Southern Cross, one certainly does not expect that, and yet there they were, a score of boys and youths playing merry tunes under my window, and pausing now and then to see if I was not awake to come out and give them their Christmas “tip.”

I dressed hastily, and came on to the verandah. The music of the band, which had puzzled me a good deal, now turned out to be produced solely by mouth-organs, blown by a number of youths dressed exactly alike in black valas, white linen jackets, and white uniform caps. The soul of the Tongan loves a uniform above everything, and all the bands in the islands—of whom there are an astonishing number—wear specially made costumes of a rather military type.

It was frightfully hot, for Christmas is midsummer here, and the day was exceptionally warm in any case.

But the “waits,” standing out in the burning sun, did not seem to feel the heat at all. They blew lustily away at their mouth-organs, playing English dance music, Tongan songs, missionary hymns, in wonderful time and harmony, and with the inimitable Tongan verve and swing, poor though the instruments were. The performance was quite worth the gift they expected, I listened as long as they cared to play. Then they collected their dues, and went off to serenade a white trader, who, I strongly suspected, had been celebrating Christmas Eve after a fashion that would not tend to make him grateful for an early call.

For me, Christmas had begun on the previous evening when I went to the midnight Mass at the church upon the shore, among the palms and the feathery ironwood trees. In the crystal-clear moonlight, what a brilliant scene it was! Even outside the church, the decorations could be seen for miles, since they consisted of thousands and thousands of half-cocoanut-shells, filled with cocoanut oil, and provided with a wick of twisted fibre, which when lit, burnt with a clear ray like a star, illuminating the walls of the churchyard, the outlines of the doors and the ridges of the roof—even the winding walks about the building, too, and the low-growing trees—with a perfect Milky Way of dancing light.

Within, all the colours of a coral reef (which includes every hue of a rainbow, and many more) were in full blaze about the tremendous, unbroken floor, where the natives stood or sat cross-legged, dressed in all their gayest finery. There was a heavy scent of perfumed cocoanut oil, orange-blossom, and frangipani flowers and a rich glow of lights; and the waves of gorgeous melody that burst forth now and again with the progress of the service were like the billows of Time breaking upon the shores of Eternity. Of all the choral singing that I heard in the Pacific, that of Tonga was incomparably the fullest, the most splendid, and most majestic. The singers of Manahiki are sweeter and stranger, those of the Cook Islands more varied and soft, but the Tongan music is, for sheer magnificence and volume, unsurpassable.

The women, in their graceful tunics, with their elaborately dressed hair, and their fine, dignified presence, were all unlike the soft, sensuous, languorous syrens of Tahiti and Raratonga, They do not encourage familiarity, even from white women, and their moral character is much higher than that of their sisters in the far Eastern Pacific. Women are treated with more respect in Tonga than in any part of the Pacific. They have little to do in the way of household work, and almost no field work. The men save them most of the hard labour, on the undeniable ground that hard work makes a woman ugly, and they do not care for ugly wives!

Nearly every one wore a mat tied round the waist, partly concealing the gay dress—in spite of the extreme heat of the night. Some of the mats were new and clean, but most were old, ragged, and dirty. This curious custom is a relic of ancient heathen days in Tonga, when a handsome dress of any kind, worn by a commoner, was apt to arouse the dangerous envy of a chief, and in consequence, a native who was wearing his “best” generally tied the dirtiest old mat that he could get over all, so that he might not look too rich! The reason has long since vanished, but the custom remains in a modified form. A mat, tied round the waist with strong sinnet cord, is considered a correct finish to the gayest of festival costume in Tonga of to-day, and, as far as I was able to ascertain, its absence, on occasions of ceremony, is considered rather vulgar.

The service was enlivened by the presence of a very large and extremely loud brass band. Brass is a passion with the Tongan musician, and he certainly makes the most of it. The effects produced are a little monotonous to a European ear, but, none the less, impressive and fine.

After the midnight mass, I went home in the bright moonlight, the gentle stir of the trade-wind, the soft rustle of the ironwood trees, falling with a pleasantly soothing effect upon ears a little strained and tired by the strenuous character of the Tongan music. Next morning came the waits, and in the afternoon there were games and sports of a rather too familiar Sunday-school pattern, at the various mission stations. I did not trouble to attend any of them, as the Pacific native is certainly least interesting when most intent on copying the ways and fashions of the white man. The cricket matches which came off at various intervals during the few weeks of my stay, were well worth seeing, however, for the Tongan is a magnificent cricketer, and has often inflicted bitter defeat on the best teams that visiting men-of-war could put in the field against him.

The politically disturbed state of the island was interesting in one way, but a serious disadvantage in another, since it prevented my obtaining much information about many interesting native customs that I should have been glad to investigate. I am afraid that I deserved the worst that scientifically minded travellers could say of me, in Tonga, for I merely spent the time enjoying myself after the pleasant island fashion, and not in research or geographical note-taking, even so far as was possible. Yet, after all, what are the islands, if not a Garden of Indolence, a lotus-land, a place where one dreams, and wanders, and listens to the murmuring reef-song, and sleeps under the shade of a palm, and wakes but to dream again? Does one degenerate, in such a life? Why, yes, of course—constantly, surely, and most delightfully.

“Be good, and you will be happy, but you won’t have a good time,” says “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” one of the wisest of modern philosophers. In the islands, one is not good, in the ordinary Dr. Wattian sense of the term, and perhaps one is not happy—though if so, one never finds it out. But the good time one does have, and it is very good indeed. And if you do not believe me, dear sensible reader, never be tempted to go and try, for it is very likely that the good time and your own goodness would mutually cancel one another, and you would be unvirtuous and bored all in one. The islands are not for all, and the gateway to the “Tir-na’n-Oge” is now, as ever, hard to find.

The big Union steamer, with her ice, and her “cuisine” (cooking is never cooking, on board a passenger vessel), and her dainty little blue and white cabins, and her large cool saloon glittering with crystal and gilding, came in in due time, and I went away with her to Samoa. The three days’ run was broken by two calls in the Tongan group—one at Haapai, and one at Vavau.

Of Haapai, a long, low, wooded island, with a few hundred native inhabitants, and one or two whites, we saw nothing but the king’s palace—a great, square, two-storeyed, verandahed building, which is never lived in—and the Wesleyan chapel, which has some of the finest sinnet work in the Pacific to show. This sinnet work is quite distinctive of the islands, and is very beautiful and artistic. It is not one of the “curios” known to the markets and collections of civilisation, because it is always done in situ, and cannot be removed. At first sight, it looks like remarkably, good chip carving, done on the capitals of pillars, and about the centres of supports and beams, in various shades of red, black, brown, and yellow. Looking closer, one sees that it is much more remarkable than carving, being a solid mass of interwoven sinnet plait, as fine as very thin twine, wound and twisted into raised patterns by the clever fingers of the natives. In the church at Haapai, the sinnet plaiting is very fine and elaborate, and certainly well worth seeing. The captain of the steamer, who acted as our guide, made sure we had all seen it, and then took us a wild, hot, hurried walk across the island, to the coral beach at the other side, and past the palace, and along an endless cocoanut avenue, which was very pretty, but——

We wanted our afternoon tea, and we mutinied at that point, and insisted on going back to the ship. This grieved our commander, who conceived that his duties to the Company required he should ensure every passenger saw everything that was to be seen on the whole voyage, and shirked nothing—but we threatened to overpower and maroon him, if he did not take us back, so he returned, lecturing learnedly about the cutting off of the “Port-au-Prince,” in Haapai, by the natives, in seventeen hundred and I-forget-when. We ought to have been listening—but we wanted our tea, and we weren’t.

We reached Vavau just before dark, barely in time to admire the wonderful windings and fiords, the long blue arms and bright green islets, of this Helen among island harbours. Vavau is celebrated for its beauty through all the South Sea world, and its loveliness has not been one whit exaggerated.

In the early morning—at half-past five, to be precise—the energetic captain routed all the passengers out of their bunks, and compelled them, by sheer force of character, to follow him, groaning and puffing, up a hill five hundred feet high, and exceedingly precipitous—a mere crag, in fact—that overlooked the harbour. We did not want to go, but none of us were sorry we had been compelled, when we did get to the top and saw that matchless harbour lying extended at our feet, mile after mile of land-locked fiord and palmy headland and exquisite green island, all set in a stainless mirror of flaming blue, and jewelled, where the shallows lightened to the shore, with flashes of marvellous colour shot up from the coral reef lying underneath. Rose and amethyst and violet, and malachite green and tawny yellow—they were all there, painting the splendid sweep of the harbour waters with hues that no mortal brush could reproduce, or pen describe. We stayed there long, and even the thought of breakfast, generally a moving call, did not hurry us away.

In the afternoon, the captain had business to attend to, so he turned out one of the officers to act as guide, and sent us all off to see the Cave of the Swallows, and Mariner’s Cave, on the other side of the harbour.

If the Cave of the Swallows were situated on any European coast, it would be as tourist-ridden a spot as the Blue Grotto of Capri, or any other of the thousand famous caves through which holiday-making travellers are dragged each summer season—and would consequently be despoiled of half its loveliness. But it is very far away, in the South Sea Islands, and though a passenger steamer does visit Vavau once a month there are usually no tourists—only a missionary and a trader or two. So the lovely place lies undisturbed almost all the time, and you shall not find, when you row across the harbour to see it, that you have to wait your turn in a crowd of other boats, full of romping and larking trippers, with the guide of every party keeping a sharp look-out to see that no one takes longer than he ought going over the “sight”—so long as his charges remain outside.

Instead of this, we glide silently under a noble archway some fifty feet high, and enter a great, still, ocean sanctuary, that looks as if no wandering oar had ever profaned its peace, since first the white man came to these far-off isles. Outside, the water is Prussian blue in colour, and over a thousand feet deep, but within the arch of the cave the bottom shoots up till it is within a hundred feet of the glass-clear surface on which we float, hanging above the silver-coloured coral reefs of the deep sea-bed, like birds hanging in air. The roof and walls of the cave are brilliant verdigris green, the water-floor, that curves so. closely in and out of the numerous arches and recesses, where mysterious shadows creep, is sapphire shot with fire. At one side of the cave there is a dark winding corridor leading to depths unknown. We glide down this a little way, and there before us opens out—surely, a temple and a shrine! The water-floor spreads and broadens here into the carpet of a high, still, secret inner cave, in the centre of which springs up a splintered pedestal—shattered, one fancies, by the blow that broke the image that must surely once have stood in this strange sea-shrine. From an unseen rift in the roof, far above, a white ray of sun strikes down into the cave, and falls like a blast from an offended heaven upon the broken pedestal.

There is a geological explanation, no doubt, but we shall not look for it, for this is a wonder that would have delighted Victor Hugo himself, who drew the scenery of the “Toilers of the Sea.” And Victor Hugo’s pen would be needed by any one who would adequately describe the spot.

There is a rock in the outer cave, that sounds like a church bell when struck with an oar, and this delights the boatmen greatly, though they have heard it every time the steamer came up to Vavau. It is, indeed, a solemn and beautiful sound, and well suited to the place.

Going back to the ship, we are shown the spot where the famous Mariner’s Cave opens out, under water. There is nothing whatever to be seen, since the entrance is six feet under water at low tide. The story was first told to the world in Mariner’s “Tonga,” published 1802, and was utilised by Byron in his poem of “The Island.” A young chief, it was said, was chasing a turtle one day, and saw the creature dive. He followed it, and was surprised to find that, on rising after his dive, he had reached an under-water cave of considerable size, to which there was no outlet save the one by which he had come in. Giving up the turtle, he dived again, returned to the surface, and did not trouble himself about the cave until, some months later, it occurred to him as an excellent place for an elopement—the parents of the girl he loved having refused to give her to him. So it came about that the young chief’s sweetheart disappeared, and no one knew what had become of her until one day a boating party, to their intense amazement, saw what appeared to be the ghost of the girl rising from the heart of the waves. The apparition stared round, saw the intruders, and immediately disappeared. She was seen no more, but the story caused so much talk, that in the end the true secret came out, and it was discovered that the chief had hidden his lady-love in the cave, diving down with food to her day by day, and even bringing torches, safely wrapped in leaves. The stem parents, touched by so much devotion, relented, and the chief triumphantly brought home his bride at last in full day.

Mariner, who was interested in the ancient tale, succeeded in reaching the cave himself, and found it as represented. He surmised that there was an air supply, passing through invisible cracks in the rock above, for the air seemed to keep fresh. There was something like a rough couch of stone at one end, where the imprisoned girl had made her bed. No light whatever penetrated the cavern.

Since Mariner’s time, very few Europeans have succeeded in entering the cave, which is extremely difficult to get into, owing to the length of the passage under water, and the currents of the tides. About thirty years ago, Captain Luce, of H.M.S. Esk, succeeded in entering the cave, but rose too soon on going out, and lacerated his back so badly against the coral spears under water, that he died in a few days. Since then, I heard that one white man had gone safely in and returned, but no one seemed to know who, or when. None of our party, at all events, felt tempted to make the trial.

The steamer was ready to start when we got back, so we hurried on board, and started away for Samoa. There was much more to see in Vavau, but the only way of seeing it was to stop over for a month and remain in the village. For this no one had time. I was giving a month to each group of islands, which is little enough in the Pacific—but I knew very well that, unless I had had a vessel of my own, or a year or two extra to spend, it was impossible to see all that could be seen.

Tofoa, for instance, one of the Tongan Group, which is an active volcano, and, naturally, not inhabited—what could be more interesting than a call there? But uninhabited volcanoes do not furnish cargo for steamship companies, so all we could see was a smear of smoke in the far distance, as we steamed on our way to Apia, the capital of the “Navigators” Group, better known, since the days of Stevenson, as Samoa.