Little Damien’s Grave in the Forest—I go peddling in the South Seas—The Art of Tattooing—About Apia and Samoan Life

I met Raeltoa in Apia one afternoon. He caught hold of my hand and kissed it, and was full of grief, for poor little Damien, his daughter, was dead. I felt terribly cut up at hearing about it. She had caught influenza. Poor Raeltoa, I did my best to soothe him, and at his intense wish went out with him to the little grave. It was a terribly lonely pathetic spot—a tiny mound under a small coco-palm; the flowers were dying over my little dead friend, and Raeltoa and I stood there side by side and both felt very unhappy. I stayed with Raeltoa that night, and the next night, but did not sleep, for on the wall just by my bed hung the toy fiddle I had made and the bow. The strings were broken and the little warm hands that had held it lay in the grave. We were a sad family, Raeltoa, his wife, the children and I, and when I bade them good-bye they had tears in their eyes, and I also felt sad.

After bidding Raeltoa good-bye I found myself once more on my “beam-ends” and was extremely pleased to fall in with a young trader who hired me for canvassing purposes. He had purchased a quantity of trinkets and gaudy underclothing with the intention of travelling inland to the native villages, and so for some time I was employed in bartering with the Samoan men and youths. I often watched their delight as they attired themselves, as soon as they had purchased our goods, in old shirts of various shades. The dusky maidens danced and whirled with hysterical pleasure as they pulled on the yellow stockings or stood smiling in white shoes, on their arms tin bracelets sparkling with jewels made of coloured glass, while my friend the Cockney trader perspired with delight over his bargains, and the sights that we saw. “Gaud lummy ducks!” and “Ain’t this all right?” he would say as we watched the different youths and maidens doing double shuffles and turning head over heels as we dressed them up. Then we passed on under the tropic palms and mangroves to the forest track that led to the next village.

After I gave up peddling in the South Seas I became acquainted with a young apprentice who had left a ship at Apia, and he and I went off miles away to Tutuela and camped by Pangopango harbour and on the shore side we built a little hut and lived Robinson Crusoe lives. My comrade was a most cheerful companion and came from ’Frisco. We had fine times in that hut under the coco-nut trees, and lived mostly by fishing; the ports and lagoons below were crammed with small and big fish. We had an old catamaran and sailed around dressed in shirt and pants only, and we got so sunburnt that we were very nearly as brown as the natives. I could almost write a book about those times, so varied and delightful they were. Arthur Pink, for that was my comrade’s name, got a berth on the American steamer and went back to ’Frisco. He was a manly fellow, a staunch friend, and I was grieved to lose him. Before he went he got in with a Samoan tatau (tattooer) and had the history of Samoa tattooed on his back and legs, chiefs, women, birds and flowers, etc.; he tried to persuade me to get tattooed but I declined. Tattooing is a great art in the South Seas and the natives go through a deal of pain during the operations. Some of the flesh engravings are exceedingly well done; they perform the operation with an instrument something like a small tooth comb made of bone. The women try to outrival each other in the beauty of the tattooing which is mostly done on the lower part of the back and the thighs and hips, wonderful schemes of tattoo art.

Before closing this chapter I will give a few details about the Samoan and South Sea groups and the people thereon. The chief Isles of Samoa are Upolu, Savaii, Tutuela and Manua. They are all of volcanic origin, are surrounded by coral reefs and palm-shaded lagoons; from the shore side to the mountain slopes inland grow the dark coco-palms, the beautiful bread-fruit trees, mangroves, plantains and other wild tropical bush and fern-trees, wherein sparkle and flit gorgeous-coloured butterflies, green parrots and cooing droves of Samoan doves. In the shades of the forest and thick scrubby vegetation grow scented flowers and over the forest paths as you pass along in the cool evenings the winds from seaward, hovering in the thickets steal out in whiffs to your nostrils, whiffs that smell like honey mixed with the ripe breath of decaying bush flowers; on the slopes grows the beautiful hibiscus.

The mountain peaks, just inland, rise to the height of four thousand and five thousand feet. Dotted with forest they stand in rugged grandeur against the sky, and when the trade winds are blowing thick clouds come sweeping in from seaward, smash against the peaks on their swift flight, twisting and curling into a thousand magical shapes that fade away like monstrous herds of phantom elephants and distorted mammoth things as moonlight steals over the flying mist. Some of the mountains have enormous craters wherein grow baby forests, haunted by singing birds. In the gullies far below and miles beyond are native villages, homesteads that look like sheds, open all round so that the wind blows through and keeps them cool. From the forest up there you can see the heaving Pacific Ocean twinkling in the moonlight.

Apia is the capital of Upolu and has a very mixed population. The white buildings are mostly stores kept by Germans; nearly all the large buildings are missionary halls and churches, German, American and English chapels, wherein they teach the natives hypocrisy and the misery of hell, and they are such adept pupils that they soon outrival their teachers in the great art of artfulness. A good many of the Samoans can read and write English much better than the poorer class of England can. No Samoan would eat or even smell the food that the middle classes of England live on.

The main trade of Samoa is in copra. Copra is dried coco-nut and is exported to Australia and elsewhere. It is picked and cured and packed by the natives under the supervision of the whites, Germans and Americans, who get good profits and often make a fortune. It has never been known or recorded in any book that a Samoan ever made a fortune, which seems remarkable when we consider that it is his own country. There was a Samoan chief in the old days who endeavoured to make money out of his copra plantation, and bought up a lot of territory for coco-nut growing, but the missionaries, acting for the traders, frightened him out of his life, told him he would go to hell for putting his heathen mind into mundane things, and for his sins they fined him heavily and pinched all his copra plantation. He turned out to be a good chief and went into the building line and built many fine houses for the missionaries wherein were many rooms and great comforts. For this work he was given one tin of condensed milk a week and at the completion of the contract a paper-covered hymnbook.

The Samoans, Tongans and Tahitians are a handsome race, the men standing nearly six feet; they are well built and of a sunburnt colour, have dark bright eyes, thick curly hair which they dye to a golden hue, their temperament is cheerful, and they are always singing. The women are very good-looking, with roundish faces and full lips; their noses are inclined to get flat as they get old; they have earnest kind-looking eyes, well-shaped bodies and good limbs whereon the tattoo of ancient pictorial Samoa is beautifully engraved so as to show off the curves of the back and thighs and give them an antique appearance. In fact when they stand quite still under the coco-palms you could almost imagine they were beautifully finished statues if it were not for the flies buzzing round their eyes making them blink.

The native children are wistful, plump little mites; much prettier than European infants and very intelligent. They can swim at three months old; talk, run and sing at a year old, and if a Samoan had a child that sucked a dummy at six years old and wailed drivelling along in its pram at an advanced age, as the children of the wealthy class of England do, they would look upon it as a great curio and smother it for shame on the first starless night.

They are a clean race, and, except for the odour of the scented coco-nut oil which they polish their velvet skins with, do not smell of perspiration as the clothed white do in hot weather. A Samoan could not sleep or rest if a flea found him lying on his bed mat; if a flea is discovered in a Samoan house they know that a new-chum missionary has been hovering near. The native girls and women are naturally modest and they will blush at any coarse words or suggestions from white men; but they are very fond of finery, and so often fall before the lure of the whites, who are generally thousands of miles away when the victim becomes a mother. At heart they are extremely religious and innately feel that some great Power watches over them, but this feeling is gradually dying away under the influence of the missionaries, who look so human to their eyes as they live in luxury and wax fat in the best Samoan houses. The Samoan has seen everything as it is and knows that the white missionaries and traders are human beings like himself, looking for all they can get and enjoying life to the uttermost, and so the glamour is fading in the South Seas as it has faded in the West, where many still believe all they hear and read about the converted heathen who would rather die than sell his honour.

The whites consist chiefly of tourists, traders and missionaries of various sects. Many of the missionaries are honest in their profession, really believing all they teach, have weary eyes and remind one of those bedraggled flies that crawl up the windowpane looking for light. The traders are mostly rough, sunburnt, crooked-nosed men and do their best to do well and work hard at their various trades. Some are a strange mixture of the bushman and pirate. The honest ones toil hard to make money and settle down prosperous in a shanty, furnished with a large spittoon, pipes and cases of the best imported whisky, and a shakedown bed, as close as possible to the ground, so that they can crawl by night on their hands and knees from the nearest Apia bar-room straight into bed. Stolid, square-headed Germans abound and speak as though they helped to create the universe, drink a deal on the sly, are very coarse when drunk, and it does not matter how well a thing is done they are sure to say “But you should see the way they do that in Germany.” Most of the Europeans wear white duck pants and broad-brimmed straw hats, and do a deal of leaning against palm-trees, smoking and spitting, also loafing by Apia saloon-bars, where they stand in huddled groups beneath the coco-palms and watch the Samoans toddling by to the mission-rooms with Bibles under their arms.

As the steamers and schooners call into the harbour, tourists and sailors come ashore; some go on the spree, some get drunk and others go curio-hunting. Sometimes the Élite of Australian towns arrive on tour and gaze on everyone with patronising eyes. I saw one lot from Sydney arrive, people of high standing too; they had receding chins and staring eyes like bits of glass rubbed over with fat and spoke with very conventional voices. The natives, scantily clothed, go shuffling through the streets, singing and jabbering. Apia smells of ripe bananas and tropical vegetation. It is the modern Garden of Eden; the ghosts of Adam and Eve roam the forest by night and listen to the laughter and wails of their fallen children as they eat of the forbidden fruit and the ships creep into the bays and again go seaward back to the shadows of the cities.

Sailors and rovers settle down in the South Sea capitals, talk all day of Rio, Shanghai, and Japanese girls that did the Eastern can-can, drunken sprees in ’Frisco, phantom ships and wonderful fifty-day voyages from London to Sydney on the Cutty’s Ark; old sea captains, mates with master certificates, disappointed men, wrinkled and sea-beaten Scotch engineers, dreaming of Glasgow, engine-rooms, donkey boilers and sea bilges, and that beautiful young woman at Marseilles who lay in their bunk berth so drunk that they could not wake her when the anchor was going up, so kept her aboard in secret the whole voyage out to Melbourne, where she went ashore and became a lady governess, taught French, eventually married a vicar in the suburbs and became “Visiting lady” and was beloved by all for her purity and winning ways. The ancient old man from the Solomon Isles with sad eyes is to be seen there too, still laughless and grim over the tragedy of that long-ago night when his white wife disappeared, and after exploring the Island forest the cannibalistic natives found him starving, gave him drink and meat, and next day by the strangest coincidence possible he discovered that he had eaten his own wife. The great truth of truth being stranger than fiction is vividly revealed in all you see and hear in the Islands of the far-away Pacific, where the good men brush aside the conventionalities and go the whole hog, and the old sinners of the European cities, seeking a haven of rest from the law, with all their passions withered and asleep, become virtuous and moralise. They are strange old fellows, good company and extremely interesting as they sit by their bungalows and talk at night by South Sea shores. The waves steal over the coral reefs and murmur mysteriously by the lagoons of magic lands, dark with forest branches; midnight stars are reflected in the clear harbour waters as the blue vault of heaven over your head gleams with worlds that are twinkling and flashing and you dream you hear them singing, and see writ on the wonderful canvas of starry space the bright eternal words, expressing the tremendous loneliness of Infinity that swallows up human imagination, leaving us only wonder and hope.