First sighted by Balboa in the year 1513, and for more than two centuries regarded by the Spaniards as their own possession, these midmost waters of the world lay locked behind one difficult and dangerous portal. During these centuries the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic—but arms of the Pacific—were gloomy with mysteries. The Spanish sailors used to chant a litany when they saw St. Elmo’s Fire glittering on the mast-head, and exorcised the demon of the waterspout by elevating their swords in the form of crosses. Mermaids still lived in the tranquil blue waters. The darkness of the storm was thronged with gigantic shadowy figures. The pages of Purchas and Hackluyt offer no lack of supernatural visitations. Thus superstition joined with substantial danger to guard the entrance to the Pacific. Balboa himself was beheaded. Everybody who had to do with Magellan’s first passage into the Pacific came to a bad end. The captain was murdered in a brawl by the natives of the Philippines; the sailor De Lepe, who first sighted the straits from the mast-head, was taken prisoner by the Algerians, embraced the faith of the False Prophet, and so lost his everlasting soul; Ruy Falero died raving mad. There was a fatality upon the whole ship’s company.

Two years before Magellan’s memorable voyage, the western boundary of the Pacific had been approached by the Portuguese, Francisco Serrano having discovered the Molucca Islands immediately after the conquest of Malacca by the celebrated Albuquerque. To stimulate exertion, and to preclude contention in the rivalry of dominion between Portugal and Spain, Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander the Sixth, drew a line down the map through the western limits of the Portuguese province of Brazil, and allotted to Portugal all heathen lands she should discover on the eastern half of this line; to Spain, all heathen lands to the west. So shadowy was the knowledge of geography at the time that this apportionment of His Holiness left it doubtful to which hemisphere the Moluccas belonged; and the precious spices peculiar to those islands rendered the decision important. To ascertain this was the purpose of Magellan’s voyage across the Pacific. In this waste of waters Magellan made two discoveries: a range of small islands—including Guam among its number—which he named Ladrones, on account of the thievish disposition of the natives; and, at the cost of his life, one of the islands which has since been called the Philippines.

The voyage of Magellan proved that by the allotment of Alexander the Sixth, the Pacific belonged to Spain. And though for eight generations the Spaniards were hereditary lords of the Pacific, they soon grew greedy and jealous and lazy in their splendid and undisturbed monopoly. Once or twice, it is true, the English devils took the great galleon: but only once or twice in all these years. Lesser spoils occasionally fell into the hands of pirates; for did not Dampier take off Juan Fernandez a vessel laden with “a quantity of marmalade, a stately and handsome mule, and an immense wooden image of the Virgin Mary”? Towns, too, were occasionally sacked. But the Spaniards feared little danger, and ran few risks. They grew richer and lazier, and troubled themselves little in exploring the great expanse of the Pacific. They coasted the Americas as far north as California, which they half-suspected to be an island. The Galapagos, Juan Fernandez, and Masafuera they knew; a part of China, a part of Japan, the Philippines, Celebes, Timor, and the Ladrones. Voyages across the Pacific between Manilla and Acapulco were not infrequent: but these voyages were sterile in discovery. The traditional route, once through the Straits of Magellan, was to touch at Juan Fernandez, coast South America, stand in at Panama, turn out to sea again, appear off Acapulco, and then sail in the parallel of 13° N. to the Ladrones. The AbbÉ Raynal states that the strictest orders were given by the Spanish Government prohibiting captains on any account to deviate from the track laid down on their charts during the voyage between these places.

In the darkness of this uncharted ocean there was believed to stretch a great southern continent of fabulous wealth and beauty: the Terra Australis Incognita that survived pertinaciously in the popular imagination until the time of Captain Cook. Members of the Royal Society had proved, beyond doubt, that the right balance of the earth required a southern continent; geographers pointed out how Quiros, Juan Fernandez and Tasman had touched at various points of this continent. Politicians and poets agreed that treasures of all kinds would be found there,—though they varied in their appropriation of these Utopian resources. The controversy over the existence of this continent was vehemently revived in 1770 by the appearance of Alexander Dalrymple’s An Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean. Dalrymple was an ardent advocate of the reality of the Terra Australis Incognita, and to encourage an experimental confirmation of his faith, he dedicated his handsome quarto: “To the man who, emulous of Magellan and the heroes of former times, undeterred by difficulties and unseduced by pleasure, shall persist through every obstacle, and not by chance but by virtue and good conduct succeed in establishing an intercourse with a Southern Continent.” Dr. Kippis, Captain Cook’s biographer, writing in 1788, says he remembers how Cook’s “imagination was captivated in the early part of his life with the hypothesis of a southern continent. He has often dwelt upon it with rapture.” The year following Dalrymple’s dedication, Captain Cook, back from his first voyage in the Pacific, was commissioned by the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, to go out and settle once and for all the mystery of the Southern Continent. So long as this mystery remained unsettled, the Pacific stretched a great limbo pregnant with the wildest fancies. Between the times of Magellan and Captain Cook there was no certainty as to what revelations it held to disgorge.

It was in 1575 that Drake climbed the hill and the tree upon its summit from which could be seen both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. “Almighty God,” this devout pirate exclaimed, “of thy holiness give me life and leave to sail in an English ship upon that sea!” God heard his prayer, and blessed him with rich pirate spoils in the Pacific, and honoured him at home by a “stately visit” from the Queen. Yet he died at sea, and in a leaden coffin his body was dropped into the ocean slime. Cavendish continued the British tradition of lucrative piracy, and in 1586 captured the great plate galleon. This stimulated competition in high-sea robbery, until in 1594, the capture of Sir Richard Hawkins daunted even English courage.

In 1595, Alvaro Mendana de Neyra, departing from the beaten track across the Pacific on his way to occupy the Solomon Islands which he had discovered twenty-eight years earlier, chanced upon a new group of islands which he named Las Marquesas de Mendoca, in honour of his patron Mendoca, Marquis of Cenete, and viceroy of Peru. He had mass said on shore, refitted his vessels, planted a few crosses in devout memorial, to die before he accomplished the object of his voyage, and to leave the Marquesas unmolested by visitors until visited by Captain Cook in 1774. It was in the Marquesas, of course, that Melville lived with the cannibals.

The seventeenth century saw the Dutch upon the Pacific. During the greater part of the century, England was busy with troublesome affairs at home; the Spanish were too indolent to bestir themselves. Unmolested by competition, the great Dutch navigators, Joris Spilbergen, La Maire, Schouten, and, most famous of all, Tasman, drifted among the islands of the extreme southwest. It was not until 1664 that the French sailed upon the Pacific. To the end of the century belong the buccaneers—Morgan, Sawkin, Edward Cooke, Woodes, Rogers, Cowley, Clipperton, Shelvocke and Dampier. William Dampier, the greatest of these voyagers, crossed the Pacific, missing all islands but New Zealand. He added but little to the stock of knowledge that had been already collected from the narratives of Tasman, or Schouten. W. Clark Russell, in his life of Dampier, suggests it as probable “that his failure, coupled with the despondent tone that characterises his narrative, went far to retard further explorations of the South Seas. It was no longer disputed that a vast body of land stood in those waters. All that Dampier said in its favour was theoretical; all that he had to report as an eye-witness, all that he could speak to as facts, was extremely discouraging.” The myth of the entrancing beauties and voluptuous charms of the South Seas owes nothing to Dampier except, perhaps, a delayed inception. Of the inhabitants of the South Seas he reports that they had the most unpleasant looks and the worst features of any people he ever saw; and, says he: “I have seen a great variety of Savages.” He speaks of them as “blinking Creatures,” with “black skins and Hair frizzled, tall, thin, etc.”

Russell considered the depressing influence of Dampier’s recorded adventures manifested in the direction given to later navigators. Byron in 1764, Wallis, Mouat, and Cartaret in 1766, were despatched on voyages round the world to search the South Seas for new lands; but only one of them, Cartaret, deviated from Dampier’s track, confining his explorations in this way to a glance at New Guinea and New Britain, to the discovery of New Ireland, lying adjacent to the island Dampier sailed around, and to giving names to the Solomon and other groups. Both Byron and Wallis, it is true, did enter the archipelago of the Society Islands, Wallis discovering island after island, until he reached Tahiti. Wallis’s account of Otaheite—on the authority of the London Missionary Society “to be pronounced so as to rhyme with the adjective mighty”—and its people, occupies a great part of his narrative. Though his reception was not without a show of arms and bloodshed, the native women exerted themselves tirelessly to do unselfish penance for the hostile behaviour of the native males. Oammo, the ruling chief, retired from the scene, leaving the felicitation of the strangers in the hands of his consort, Oberea, “whose whole character,” according to the observations of the London Missionary Society, “for sensuality exceeded even the usual standard of Otaheite.” In the establishment of friendship that ensued, Wallis sent Lieutenant Furneaux ashore to erect a British pennant, and in defiance of the Pope, to take formal possession of the island in the name of King George the Third. Hopelessly unimpressed by the whole transaction, the natives took down the flag during the night, and for a long time afterwards the ruling chieftains wore it about their persons as a badge of royalty. Oberea’s hospitality was requited by a parting gift of some turkeys, a gander, a goose, and a cat. Oberea’s live stock figures repeatedly in the later annals of Tahiti.

Early in April, 1768, Tahiti was again visited by Europeans. Louis de Bougainville was in Tahiti only eight days. But, if Bougainville’s account be not the bravado of patriotism, during that period his ship’s company seem to have outdone their English predecessors in sensuality and open indecency. Several murders were committed more privately. And the natives, with an eye for the detection of such matters, exposed among the ship’s crew a woman who had sailed from France disguised in man’s apparel. Bougainville attached to himself a native youth, Outooroo, brother of a chieftain; Outooroo accompanied Bougainville to France. Within a few weeks after sailing from Tahiti, Bougainville discovered that Outooroo, as well as others aboard, were infected with venereal disease. Wallis very specifically asserts that his ship’s company were untouched by disreputable symptoms six months before, and still longer after their visit at Tahiti. In any event, before the first year had elapsed after the discovery of Tahiti, its inhabitants were exhibiting unmistakable signs of their contact with civilisation. In 1799, the London Missionary Society gave warning to the world: “The present existence, and the general prevalence of the evil, is but too obvious; and it concurs with other dreadful effects of sensuality, to threaten the entire population of this beautiful island, if it is not seasonably averted by the happy influence of the gospel.” The steady extinction of the Polynesian races would seem to indicate that this happy influence has, to date, not been efficacious. When Pope Alexander the Sixth gave to the indolent Spanish the heathen for inheritance, His Holiness was being used by a mysterious Providence as the guardian of heathendom. It was not until he had been for over two centuries and a half in his tomb, that the heretical and more enterprising English came to dispel the Egyptian darkness that hung protectingly over most of the islands of the Pacific, and to expose a competent barbarism to the devastating aggressions of civilisation.

Everybody knows how in 1769 the Royal Society, discovering that there would happen a transit of Venus, and that this interesting astronomical event would be best observed from some place in the Pacific, hit upon James Cook—Byron, Wallis and Cartaret all being in the Pacific at the time—master in the Royal Navy, to command the expedition. The Marquesas were chosen as the place for the observation; but while the expedition was being fitted out, Captain Wallis returned to England, bringing news of the discovery of Tahiti. So well known is the story of Captain Cook that few can boast the distinction of total ignorance of his three voyages to the Pacific,—the first in command of an astronomical expedition, the second in search of a Southern Continent, the third in quest of a Northwest Passage; of his discoveries and adventures in every conceivable part of the Pacific; of his repeated returns to Tahiti; of his finally being killed on the island called by him Owhyhee, murdered despite the fact that he had shown a power of conciliation granted to no other navigator in these seas. For, a long time ago, there lived, on the island of Hawaii, Lono the swine-god. He was jealous of his wife, and killed her. Driven to frenzy by the act, he went about boxing and wrestling with every man he met, crying, “I am frantic with my great love.” Then he sailed away for a foreign land, prophesying at his departure: “I shall return in after times on an island bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs.” When, after a year’s absence, Cook returned to Hawaii, he arrived the day after a great battle, and the victorious natives were absolutely certain that Cook was the great swine-god, Lono, who long ages ago had departed mad with love, now, to add lustre to their triumph, returned on an island bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs. This attribution of deity was hardly complimentary to Cook’s crew. And in time the islanders tired of their enthusiasm and the expense of entertaining strolling deities. After sixteen days of prodigal hospitality, the natives began stroking the sides and patting the bellies of the sailors, telling them, partly by signs, partly by words, it was time to go. They went. But a week afterwards the ship returned. There was a quarrel. Among some people a quarrel leads to a fight. In a fight somebody naturally gets killed. Or, it may have been,—Walter Besant suggests,—that perhaps it may have occurred to some native humourist to wonder how a god would look and behave with a spear stuck right through him. Cook fell into the water, and spoke no more.

In his life, as in his death, Cook enjoyed all the successes. Boswell dined with him at Sir John Pringle’s on April 2, 1776, and reported the glowing event to Dr. Johnson. A snuff-box was carved out of the planks of one of his vessels, and presented to James Fenimore Cooper. Fanny Burney records with pride her father’s meeting the famous navigator, whom she herself met in society and in her own home. Joseph Priestly contemplated accompanying Cook to the South Seas. An artist—W. Hodges—was officially appointed to accompany him to perpetuate his exploits in oil. He read learned papers before the Royal Society, for one of which the counsel adjudged him the Copley Gold Medal. Six times was his portrait painted, and once was it seriously proposed that Dr. Johnson be appointed his official biographer. Not even by Omai, a native of Tahiti that Captain Furneaux brought to England, was Captain Cook’s glory eclipsed. And Omai was received by the King, was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was laden with gifts when he was taken back to Tahiti by Captain Cook on his third voyage. Omai, too, attended meetings of the Royal Society, and it is to his credit that he behaved himself fairly well. It was regretted by the Directors of the London Missionary Society that though “great attention was paid to him by some of the nobility, it was chiefly directed to his amusement, and tended rather to augment than to diminish his habitual profligacy.” In 1785-6, there was repeatedly performed at Covent Garden Theatre a pantomime named after him. The characters, besides Omai, were Towha, the Guardian Genius of Omai’s Ancestors; Otoo, Father of Omai; Harlequin, Servant to Omai. To give a blend of edification to romance, the performance included, so a surviving play-bill announces, “a Procession exactly representing the dresses, weapons and manners of the Inhabitants of Otaheite, New Zealand, Tanna, Marquesas, Friendly, Sandwich and Easter Islands, and other countries visited by Captain Cook.” In 1789, so vividly was the tragic end of Captain Cook still mourned, that at the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, was presented a spectacular tribute posted as The Death of Captain. It was “a Grand Serious Pantomimic Ballet, in Three Parts, as now exhibiting in Paris with uncommon applause, with the Original French Music, New Scenery, Machinery, and other Decorations.” This performance may have been inspired by an Ode on the Death of Captain Cook penned by Miss Seward, the Swan of Lichfield: an ode praised by her fellow-townsman, Dr. Johnson. In 1774 there appeared in London “An Epistle from Oberea, Queen of Otaheite, to Joseph Banks, Esq., translated by T. Q. Z., Esq., Professor of the Otaheite Language in Dublin, and of all the Languages of the Undiscovered Islands in the South Seas, enriched with Historical and Explanatory Notes,” and so novel and popular was the South Sea manner, that its author was mistaken for a wit, and his efforts at humour repeatedly and laboriously imitated. As a corrective to such levity, there appeared in 1779 an effusion in verse, adorned with vignette depicting Tahitian women dancing, entitled The Injured Islanders; or, The Influence of Art upon the Happiness of Nature. There is no lack of evidence to prove that the exploits of Captain Cook brought the South Seas, and especially Tahiti, into exuberant and irresponsible popularity. Nor did business enterprise nap during the festivities. Information which had been received of the great utility of the bread-fruit, induced the merchants and planters of the British West Indies to request that means might be used to transplant it thither. For this purpose a ship was benevolently commissioned by George the Third: the Bounty, commanded by Lieutenant Bligh. The voyage of the Bounty ended in a horrible tragedy and an intensely interesting romance. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty, and its astonishing sequels, joined further to vitalise the interest in the South Seas. A frigate, significantly called the Pandora, was sent out from England to Tahiti to seize the Bounty mutineers. Though the Pandora was despatched as a messenger of justice, the usual course of festivity, amusement and debaucheries was uninterrupted during the continuance of the ship at Tahiti. And the year following, with British doggedness, Captain Bligh returned to accomplish the purpose of his former voyage which had been frustrated by mutiny. In 1793, the Daedalus, Vancouver’s storeship, stopped at Tahiti, leaving behind a Swedish sailor with a taste for savagery. The same year an American whaler, the Matilda, was wrecked off Tahiti, and the crew, delighted at their good fortune, betrayed no inclination for an immediate departure.

But while the frivolous, the sentimental, and the ungodly were busy converting Tahitian savagery into a Georgian idyll, the well-starched Wesleyan conscience crackled in horror at the black unredemption of the South Sea heathen. “The discoveries made in the great southern seas by the voyages undertaken at the command of his present majesty, George the Third,” says a spokesman for the community, “excited wonderful attention, and brought, as it were, into light a world till then almost unknown. The perusal of the accounts of these repeated voyages could not but awaken, in such countries as our own, various speculations, according as men were differently affected. But when these islands were found to produce little that would excite the cupidity of ambition, or answer the speculations of the interested”—well, then it was that the protestant conscience bestirred itself, and on September 25, 1795, founded the London Missionary Society. It celebrated its first birthday by determining to begin work with the islands of the southern ocean, “as these, for a long time past, had excited peculiar attention. Their situation of mental ignorance and moral depravity strongly impressed on our minds the obligation we lay under to endeavour to call them from darkness into marvellous light. The miseries and diseases which their intercourse with Europeans had occasioned seemed to upbraid our neglect of repairing, if possible, these injuries; but above all, we longed to send to them the everlasting gospel, the first and most distinguished of blessings which Jehovah has bestowed upon the children of men.”

A select committee of ministers, approved for evangelical principles and ability, was appointed to examine the candidates for the mission—who applied in great numbers—as to their views, capacity, and “knowledge in the mystery of godliness.” Thirty missionaries were chosen: four ministers, six carpenters, two shoemakers, two bricklayers, two tailors (one of whom, “late of the royal artillery”), two smiths, two weavers, a surgeon, a hatter, a cotton manufacturer, a cabinet maker, a harness maker, a tinsmith, a cooper, and a butcher. There were three women and three children also in the party. On August 10, 1796, on the ship Duff, commanded by Captain Wilson, who had been wonderfully converted to God, this band, in chorus with a hundred voices, sang “Jesus, at thy command—we launch into the deep” as they sailed out of Spithead. The singing, it is said, produced “a pleasing and solemn sensation.” On Sunday, March 5, 1797, after an uneventful voyage, the Duff dropped anchor at Tahiti. Seventy-four canoes came out to welcome the strangers and broke the Sabbath by crowding about the decks, “dancing and capering like frantic persons.” Nor was the first impression made upon the Missionaries entirely favourable; “their wild disorderly behaviour, strong smell of cocoa-nut oil, together with the tricks of the arreoies, lessened the favourable impression we had formed of them; neither could we see aught of that elegance and beauty in their women for which they had been so greatly celebrated.” Conversation with the natives was facilitated by the presence of two tattooed Swedes—one formerly of the crew of the Matilda, the other left by the Daedalus. During sermon and prayer the natives were quiet and thoughtful, “but when the singing struck up, they seemed charmed and filled with amazement; sometimes they would talk and laugh, but a nod of the head brought them to order.” Next day,—for they arrived on the Sabbath,—some of the missionaries landed and were presented with the house King Pomare had built for Captain Bligh. This important matter settled, the chief thought it time to enquire after entertainment; “first sky-rockets, next the violin and dancing, and lastly the bagpipe.” Lacking such diversions, the missionaries offered a few solos on the German flute,—and “it plainly appeared that more lively music would have pleased them better.”

Domestic arrangements established, to the great diversion of the natives, the missionaries tried to get some clothes on some of them. The queen had to rip open the garments, it is true, to get into them; but one Tanno Manoo, who was given a warm week-day dress, and a showy morning gown and petticoat for the Sundays, “when dressed, made a very decent appearance; taking more pains to cover her breasts, and even to keep her feet from being seen, than most of the ladies of England have of late done.” The natives were deeply perplexed by the proprieties of the Missionaries, and especially by what to them seemed the unnatural chastity of the men.

Since the Missionaries had resolved to distribute their blessings, they sent a party of brethren to make investigations on the Marquesas. The first visitors the ship received from the shore were “seven beautiful young women, swimming quite naked, except for a few green leaves tied round their middle; nor did our mischievous goats even suffer them to keep their green leaves, but as they turned to avoid them they were attacked on each side alternately, and completely stripped naked.” Such, too, was their “symmetry of features, that as models for the statuary and painter their equals can seldom be found.” As they danced about the deck, frequently bursting out into mad fits of laughter, or talking as fast as their tongues could go, surely they must have convinced more than one of the meditative brethren of the total depravity of man. Nor did these shameless savages confine their excursions to the decks. “It was not a little affecting to see our own seamen repairing the rigging, attended by a group of the most beautiful females, who were employed to pass the ball, or carry the tar-bucket, etc.; and this they did with the greatest assiduity, often besmearing themselves with the tar in the execution of their office. No ship’s company, without great restraints from God’s grace, could ever have resisted such temptations.”

Harris and Crook, two of the brethren, daring temptation, decided to stay at the Marquesas, and were moved ashore. But before the Duff sailed back to Tahiti, Harris was found on the shore about four o’clock one morning “in a most pitiable plight, and like one out of his senses.” It appears that the Marquesan chief Tenae, taking Crook upon an inland jaunt, had departed, conferring upon Harris all the privileges of domesticity. Tenae’s wife, sharing her husband’s ideas of hospitality, was troubled at Harris’ reserve. So, “finding herself treated with total neglect, became doubtful of his sex,” says the London Missionary Society in a report dedicated to George the Third, “and acquainted some of the other females with her suspicion, who accordingly came in the night, when he slept, and satisfied themselves concerning that point, but not in such a peaceable way but that they awoke him. Discovering so many strangers, he was greatly terrified; and, perceiving what they had been doing, was determined to leave a place where the people were so abandoned and given up to wickedness; a cause which should have excited a contrary resolution.” Harris was forty years old at the time, and by trade a cooper.

Crook, however, remained in the Marquesas for eighteen months, where, alone, he tried to enlighten and improve the natives. The Marquesas had a bad reputation among whalemen, and though they had been occasionally visited by enterprising voyagers—by Fanning, Krusenstern, Porter, and Finch—they for long remained especially virulent in their native depravity. It is true that Crook returned after many years to place among the Marquesans four converted natives from the Society Islands. In 1834, two missionaries from England, accompanied by Darling from Tahiti and several converted natives, recommenced the arduous work of evangelising this ferocious people. During four years the faithful Stallworthy patiently toiled at his station, when in 1838 a French frigate landed two Catholic priests in the very and the only spot then cultivated by an English protestant labourer. These fellow-workers in Christ competed for the souls of heathens. Though, in 1839, to even the odds, Stallworthy received a reinforcement of one of his English brethren, after two years the English missionaries found it impossible “to maintain usefully their ground against the united influence of heathen barbarism, popish craft, French power, and French profligacy.” Thus “ravished from the Protestant charity that had so long watched for its salvation,” the Marquesans, when discovered by Melville, were in large part virgin in their barbarism.

At Tahiti, the brethren of the London Missionary Society continued to work unrestingly, and against incredible discouragement. The natives were, as Captain Cook discovered, “prodigious expert” as thieves. One snatcher-up of unconsidered trifles, when by way of punishment chained to a pillar with a padlock, not only contrived to get away, but to steal the padlock. Yet, by the representation of the London Missionary Society, “their honesty to one another seems unimpeachable,” and they cultivated a Utopian sense of property: “They have no writing or records, but memory or landmarks. Every man knows his own; and he would be thought of all characters the basest, who should attempt to infringe on his neighbour, or claim a foot of land that did not belong to him, or his adopted friend.” Indeed, despite the reprobation dealt out to them in tracts compiled for Sunday-school edification (Mrs. F. L. Mortimer’s The Night of Toil being a typically diverting libel), the London Missionary Society, in its official reports, was—paradoxically enough—their most convincing apologist. The natural beauties of their country were again expatiated upon to the glory of the First Artist. So prodigal was the natural abundance of Tahiti that the brethren glorified it by converting it into a temptation. One of the brethren wrote in his journal: “O Lord, how greatly hast thou honoured me, that thousands of thy dear children should be praying for me, a worm! Lord, thou hast set me in a heathen land, but a land, if I may so speak, with milk and honey. O put more grace and gratitude into my poor cold heart, and grant that I may never with Jeshurun grow fat and kick.” The natives themselves were untroubled by any such compunctions. “Their life is without toil,” the brethren reported, “and every man is at liberty to do, go and act as he pleases, without the distress of care or apprehension of want: and as their leisure is great, their sports and amusements are various.” Their personal beauty, their almost ostentatious cleanliness, their boundless generosity, were by the London Missionary Society insisted upon. The best of them, however, lived “in a fearfully promiscuous intercourse,” and emulated the classical Greeks in infanticide and other reprehensible practices. Yet do the brethren allow that “in their dances alone is immodesty permitted; it may be affirmed, they have in many instances more refined ideas of decency than ourselves. They say that Englishmen are ashamed of nothing, and that we have led them to public acts of indecency never before practised among them.” But then, as the London Missionary Society says in another place: “Their ideas, no doubt, of shame and delicacy are very different from ours; they are not yet advanced to any such state of civilisation and refinement.” At their departure from native custom, however, they were untroubled by contrition. When asked “what is the true atonement for sin?” they answered, “Hogs and pearls.” When the pleasant novelty of being exhorted and preached to wore off, they did not behave impeccably during the devotions of the brethren. They often cried out “lies” and “nonsense” during the sermon. At other times they tried to make each other laugh by repeating sentences after the brethren, or by playing antics, and making faces. Many of the natives used to lie down and sleep as soon as the sermon began, while “others were so trifling as to make remarks upon the missionaries’ clothes, or upon their appearance. Thus Satan filled their hearts with folly, lest they should believe and be saved.” All the best inducements the brethren could hold out to tempt them into “the divine life” moved them not. “You talk to us of salvation, and we are dying,” they said; “we want no other salvation than to be cured of our diseases and to live here always, and to eat and talk.” So unappreciative were they of the efforts of the brethren that they explained the presence of the missionaries in Tahiti as growing out of a sensible desire to escape from the ugliness and worry and brutality of European civilisation. As for the lacerated solicitude and strange unselfishness of the brethren to confer upon each of them a soul with all of its pestering responsibilities: that, they found totally incomprehensible.

If the fall from innocence was begun in Eden, it was sealed beyond redemption in Bethlehem. For at the time of the inception of Christianity, the pagan world was going to its doom, and its death agonies were frightful in the extreme. Something had to be done to save humanity,—and something drastic. And humanity—which was at the same time the priest and the victim—found in the cross the justest symbol of its triumph in utter human defeat. More effectively to slander this world, Heaven was set up in libellous contrast; in order to heap debasement upon the flesh, the spirit was opposed to it as an infinitely precious eternal entity, tainted by contact with its mortal habitation. Blessedness lay not in harmony, but in division, and utter confusion was mistaken for total depravity. “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” But these things classical antiquity did—being given over to a reprobate mind, so St. Paul tells us. The Wesleyan brethren found in Polynesia the same untroubled indulgence in “unrighteousness, fornication and wickedness,” that had so troubled St. Paul. But in Tahiti there were no signs of the intellect that classical antiquity exhibited in the days of its reprobation. And though the Polynesians seemed to have thriven on unrighteousness, the brethren itched to infect them with misgivings, and this in a Holy Name. Melville was profoundly stirred to loathing at these efforts: a loathing heightened by the later contentions introduced into Tahiti by the rival proselyting of French Catholic missionaries. Lost in doubt and shame at such spectacles, in Clarel he thus invokes Christ:

The brethren in Tahiti were without any of Melville’s misgivings. Their faith was extraordinary. No less extraordinary was the native imperviousness to salvation. After the brethren had ceased to be an amusing novelty with gifts to bestow, the natives submitted them to neglect and mockery. Revolts against King Pomare and constant war kept the brethren in peril of their lives without releasing them to celestial jubilation. The Napoleonic wars cut them off from communication with England. During the first twelve years they heard from home only three times. These days of fruitless trial sifted the party. Many of the brethren seized any opportunity that offered to sail away on chance trading vessels. Of the seven who remained, two died. In 1801 eight new brethren came out to reinforce the number, then reduced to four. In 1804 old King Pomare died, and his son Oto became King under the title Pomare II. In the wars that followed, the mission seemed broken up: their house was burned, the printing press destroyed, and six of the brethren removed from Tahiti to Huahine. Two remained, however, to carry on the forlorn hope. But after all these years Pomare’s heart began to soften. His gods seemed to be standing him in little stead. Defeated in battle, he escaped to Eimeo, and invited the missionaries to follow him. Here he ate a sacred turtle, and when no harm came to him he dared still further. Meanwhile it was proposed in England that proselyting in Polynesia be discontinued, since after sixteen years not one conversion had been effected. But those of undaunted faith protested. The ship bearing fresh supplies and news of the revived determination of those at home to prosecute the work was met in mid-ocean with the cargo of the rejected idols of the Tahitians. In a church seven hundred and twelve feet long, with twenty-nine doors and three pulpits, all paid for by himself,—the church in which Melville witnessed Sunday devotion—King Pomare had himself moistened on the forehead with the water of life.

Backed by their royal patron, the Missionaries undertook to convert Tahiti into a Polynesian Chautauqua. As Mrs. Helen Barrett Montgomery says, in her Christus Redemptor: “We cannot follow the glowing story of how the King had a code of laws made and read it to seven thousand of his people, who, by solemn vote, made these the law of the land.” In 1839, Captain Hervey, in command of a whale-ship, reported of Tahiti: “It is the most civilised place I have been at in the South Seas. They have a good code of laws and no liquors are allowed to be landed on the island. It is one of the most gratifying sights the eye can witness to see, on Sunday, in their church, which holds about four thousand, the Queen near the pulpit with all her subjects about her, decently apparelled and seemingly in pure devotion.” Three years later, Melville attended one of these services, and was less favourably impressed.

In 1823, the French establishment of the Œuvre de la propagation de la Foi formed at Lyons, and soon cast a beneficent eye upon North and South America and the islands of Oceania. In 1814, soon after the restoration of the Bourbons, the AbbÉ Coudrin had founded the Society of Picpus “to promote the revival of the Roman Catholic religion in France, and to propagate it by missions among unbelievers or pagans.” This establishment received Papal sanction in 1817, and was placed under “the special protection of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.” In 1833, the Congregation of the Propaganda, with the confirmation of the Sovereign Pontiff, confided to the Society of Picpus the conversion of all the islands of the Pacific ocean. Two apostolic prefectures were established. M. E. Rouchouse was made bishop of Nilolopis, in partibus, and apostolic vicar of Eastern Oceania; M. C. Liansu was appointed as his prefect; two priests, Caret and Laval, and a catechist, Columban, or Murphy, were placed under his direction. In May, 1834, the Catholic missionaries arrived at Valparaiso, bound for the South Seas.

The benefits of the True Faith were not to advance into the Pacific unassisted by the secular arm. Two officers of the French Navy, Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz, in their Considerations gÉnÉrales sur la Colonisation FranÇaise dans l’Oceanie thus speak for the less purely religious interests of France: “It is impossible for a traveller who may visit the islands of the Pacific, not to speculate on the destiny of the happy groups scattered over its bosom. The first thing that strikes him is the sight of men, consecrated to a religious work, meddling with the temporal affairs of these free people, whom they have brought under their domination, under pretence of directing their consciences.... When the rapid multiplication of the population of all European countries is considered, it is evident that before long a European colony will be formed in each of the innumerable islands of the Pacific, and missionary efforts merit therefore all the attention of the government.... On the signal from the first cannon that shall be fired in Europe, a protecting flag will be seen to rise on each of these islands now so peaceful. God grant that the tri-coloured flag of our nation may show itself with honour!”

At this time, it was a law of Tahiti that before a foreigner could have leave to reside on the island, permission must be granted by Queen Pomare and the chiefs. The Catholic missionaries, aware of this regulation, succeeded, however, in effecting a landing disguised as carpenters, and to this island, partly idolatrous, partly heretic, they gave the salutation of peace. Pomare, however, was unappreciative of their salute, and refused to the disguised priests permission to remain. This exclusion, in its sequel, raised the most delicate questions of international diplomacy, and bestirred Pomare to scatter anxious letters broadcast over the face of the earth. Her correspondence included a cosmopolitan company of Commodores and Admirals, Queen Victoria, the President of the United States, and Louis Philippe of France. Admiral Du Petit-Thouars, in command of the Venus, was despatched to Tahiti under special orders, “to make the Queen and the inhabitants feel that France is a great and powerful nation.” The Venus arrived at Tahiti, August 27, 1838, and proceeded to summary justice. Under the pressure of a broadside, Pomare was obliged to beg pardon of the most Christian King. “I am only,” she wrote to Louis Philippe, “the sovereign of a little insignificant island; may glory and power be with your majesty; let your anger cease; and pardon me the mistake that I have made.”

It was further demanded of Pomare that she pay “a great and powerful nation” the sum of two thousand dollars as a more solid reparation for her bad behaviour. Pomare was appalled at the magnitude of this sum: there was no such amplitude of wealth in her treasury. The missionaries were moved in compassion to finance her political indiscretion. But in the next humiliation dealt out to her, the brethren were unable to offer much assistance. The French Admiral bore instructions to require that the French flag be hoisted the day following the receipt of the two thousand dollars, and that it be honoured by Pomare with a salute of twenty-one guns. The situation was awkward. Pomare was very short of powder. She assured the Admiral she had not enough for more than five shots. The Admiral paced the deck, and passed his fingers through his hair in considerable agitation. “What will they say in France,” said the patriotic commander, “when they know that I furnished the powder to salute my own flag?” The difficulty was great. An expedient was necessary, and the Admiral hit upon one: “Mr. Consul,” said he to the Rev. Pritchard, and British Consul, “I can give you some powder, and you can do with it as you please.” According to the French report, Pritchard “himself loaded the bad cannon on the little island and directed the firing;” and soon after, the French observed Pritchard to look “thin and bilious, with an appearance of pride, and the cold dignity so natural to the English.”

But the visiting Admiral had not yet completed his duty to “the justly irritated King of the French.” He condescended to visit the Queen on purpose to introduce Moerenhaut as French consul. Moerenhaut had been American consul at Tahiti, but had been relieved of the responsibilities of that office at a request of Pomare to the President of the United States. Moerenhaut’s life, in all of its varied and unsavoury details, has yet to be written: it would make an entertaining supplement to the Police Gazette. Moerenhaut himself adventured in letters, and in his Voyages aux Îles du Grand Ocean he exposes many of the corrupt practices that he himself was instrumental in bringing about. The Admiral and Moerenhaut, in the name of Louis Philippe, drew up a convention with Pomare “to establish the right of French subjects to stay in the territory of the Tahitian sovereign.”

During these proceedings, Captain Dumont D’Urville, cruising the Pacific, arrived at the Marquesas with two corvettes, the Astrolabe and the ZÉlÉ, hot from the Gambier islands, the seat of Bishop Rouchouse. At Gambier, when “all were gay and cheerful,” D’Urville had been enlightened as to the true character of the heretical missionaries: “oppressors of the poor Tahitians; in short, vampires, whose cruelties and inquisitorial tortures were as atrocious as their hypocrisy was disgusting.” Before he left the jovial board, his indignation was so high that “he felt the honour of his flag” required that he sail to Tahiti and dispense “exemplary chastisement.” Upon his arrival at the Marquesas he was surprised to find Du Petit-Thouars, who had been there, already departed. There was value to his visit, however, in giving to the pious efforts of Bishop Rouchouse the support of a few broadsides. But there were other scenes at the Marquesas of which Bishop Rouchouse, in good conscience, could not have approved. Melville asserts that while the Acushnet was at the Marquesas, “our ship was wholly given up to every species of riot and debauchery.” In the official account of the voyages of Captain Dumont D’Urville is a more detailed account of a similar surrender. Melville says of the dances of the women of the Marquesas: “There is an abandoned voluptuousness in their character that I dare not attempt to describe.” The French, in their official reports, exhibit a greater courage.

Captain Dumont D’Urville arrived in Tahiti nine days after the submission of Pomare, and the day following his arrival he accompanied Admiral Du Petit-Thouars on a visit to the Queen. He had not yet cooled in his patriotic indignation, so he addressed Pomare severely, and with gratifying results: “I perceived that Pomare was deeply affected, and that tears began to fall from her eyes, as she threw them on me with an evident expression of anger. At the same moment I also perceived that Captain Du Petit-Thouars endeavoured to diminish the effect of my words by some little liberties that he was taking with the Queen; such as pulling gently her hair, and patting her cheeks; he even added that she was foolish to be so much affected.”

When her French visitors sailed away, Pomare on November 8, 1838, despatched a letter to her sister sovereign, Victoria, to implore “the shelter of her wing, the defence of her lion, and the protection of her flag.” The Tahitians expressed their sense of the favours being forced upon them by the French by passing a law prohibiting “the propagation of any religious doctrines, or the celebration of any religious worship, opposed to that true gospel of old propagated in Tahiti by the missionaries from Britain; that is, these forty years past.”

This breach of international courtesy brought Captain Laplace on the ArtÉmise out to Tahiti “to obtain satisfaction from the Lutheran evangelists who had forced themselves on a simple and docile people.” As the ArtÉmise was off the coast, on April 22, 1839, she struck on a coral reef: an accident that resulted in the officers and crew being lodged on shore for two months. These two months must have given the brethren bitter fruit for reflection upon the ease with which their years of unselfish striving could be obliterated. According to the account of Louis Reybaud of the ArtÉmise: “From the first, the most perfect harmony prevailed between the ship’s company and the natives. Each of the latter chose his tayo,—that is, another self—among the sailors. Between tayos everything is common. At night, the tayos, French and Tahitian, went together to the common hut. Every sailor has thus a house, a wife, a complete domestic establishment. As jealousy is a passion unknown to these islanders, it may be imagined what resources and pleasures such an arrangement afforded our crew. The natives were delighted with the character of our people; they had never met with such gaiety, expansiveness, and kindness in any other foreigners. The beach presented the aspect of a continual holiday, to the great scandal of the missionaries. We have seen how the men managed, and what friends they found. The officers were not less fortunate. The island that Bougainville called the New Cytherea does not belie its name. When the evening set in, every tree along the coast shaded an impassioned pair; and the waters of the river afforded an asylum to a swarm of copper-coloured nymphs, who came to enjoy themselves with the young midshipmen. Wherever you walked you might hear the oui! oui! oui! the word that all the women have learnt with marvellous facility. It would have been far more difficult to teach them to say non!”

Among these relaxations, Captain Laplace found time publicly to declare to the islanders “how shameful and even dangerous it was to violate the faith of treaties, and how unjust and barbarous was intolerance.” Before his sailing, Captain Laplace commanded Pomare to come aboard the ArtÉmise to sign a treaty guaranteeing no discrimination against the French. Pomare’s despondency at the beginning of the proceedings was solaced by champagne and brandy. Casimir Henricy, who accompanied the ArtÉmise throughout her circumnavigatory voyage, says: “When the spirits of the party were sufficiently elevated to find everything good, and while the hands were yet sufficiently steady not to let the pen drop, the treaty was produced as the crowning act of the festivity. M. Laplace thought he had gained a great victory over Polynesian diplomacy; and, certainly, never was a political horizon more bright in flowers and bottles.”

While Tahiti was the theatre of these religious and political cabals, more important and decisive measures occupied the mighty minds of Europe. The captains who had punished and conventionalised Pomare and her people had made their reports in person to their sovereign in Paris, and to the ministers of state, who had indicated their instructions. Honours and titles were awarded to the successful officers, and on their showing it was resolved that the Marquesas should first be taken possession of, and then Tahiti. Rear-Admiral Du Petit-Thouars was commissioned to execute the seizure. On board the Reine Blanche, accompanied by three frigates and three corvettes, he touched Fatu-Heva, the southernmost of the Marquesas, on April 26, 1842, and culminated his triumphant progress through the group in the bay of Tyohee at Nukuheva on May 31.

The Acushnet arrived at Nukuheva at a memorable time. “It was in the summer of 1842 that we arrived at the islands,” says Melville; “the French had then held possession of them for several weeks.”