CHAPTER XII--THE STORY OF A PLANTATION
Taahauku, on the south-westerly coast of the island of Hiva-oa--
Tahuku, say the slovenly whites--may be called the port of Atuona.
It is a narrow and small anchorage, set between low cliffy points,
and opening above upon a woody valley: a little French fort, now
disused and deserted, overhangs the valley and the inlet. Atuona
itself, at the head of the next bay, is framed in a theatre of
mountains, which dominate the more immediate settling of Taahauku
and give the salient character of the scene. They are reckoned at
no higher than four thousand feet; but Tahiti with eight thousand,
and Hawaii with fifteen, can offer no such picture of abrupt,
melancholy alps. In the morning, when the sun falls directly on
their front, they stand like a vast wall: green to the summit, if
by any chance the summit should be clear--water-courses here and
there delineated on their face, as narrow as cracks. Towards
afternoon, the light falls more obliquely, and the sculpture of the
range comes in relief, huge gorges sinking into shadow, huge,
tortuous buttresses standing edged with sun. At all hours of the
day they strike the eye with some new beauty, and the mind with the
same menacing gloom.
The mountains, dividing and deflecting the endless airy deluge of
the Trade, are doubtless answerable for the climate. A strong
draught of wind blew day and night over the anchorage. Day and
night the same fantastic and attenuated clouds fled across the
heavens, the same dusky cap of rain and vapour fell and rose on the
mountain. The land-breezes came very strong and chill, and the
sea, like the air, was in perpetual bustle. The swell crowded into
the narrow anchorage like sheep into a fold; broke all along both
sides, high on the one, low on the other; kept a certain blowhole
sounding and smoking like a cannon; and spent itself at last upon
the beach.
On the side away from Atuona, the sheltering promontory was a
nursery of coco-trees. Some were mere infants, none had attained
to any size, none had yet begun to shoot skyward with that whip-
like shaft of the mature palm. In the young trees the colour
alters with the age and growth. Now all is of a grass-like hue,
infinitely dainty; next the rib grows golden, the fronds remaining
green as ferns; and then, as the trunk continues to mount and to
assume its final hue of grey, the fans put on manlier and more
decided depths of verdure, stand out dark upon the distance,
glisten against the sun, and flash like silver fountains in the
assault of the wind. In this young wood of Taahauku, all these
hues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. The
trees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and there
interspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut for
storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the
Casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever
before him the dark amphitheatre of the Atuona mountains and the
cliffy bluff that closes it to seaward. The trade-wind moving in
the fans made a ceaseless noise of summer rain; and from time to
time, with the sound of a sudden and distant drum-beat, the surf
would burst in a sea-cave.
At the upper end of the inlet, its low, cliffy lining sinks, at
both sides, into a beach. A copra warehouse stands in the shadow
of the shoreside trees, flitted about for ever by a clan of
dwarfish swallows; and a line of rails on a high wooden staging
bends back into the mouth of the valley. Walking on this, the new-
landed traveller becomes aware of a broad fresh-water lagoon (one
arm of which he crosses), and beyond, of a grove of noble palms,
sheltering the house of the trader, Mr. Keane. Overhead, the cocos
join in a continuous and lofty roof; blackbirds are heard lustily
singing; the island cock springs his jubilant rattle and airs his
golden plumage; cow-bells sound far and near in the grove; and when
you sit in the broad verandah, lulled by this symphony, you may say
to yourself, if you are able: 'Better fifty years of Europe . . .'
Farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and green, and dotted
here and there with stripling coco-palms. Through the midst, with
many changes of music, the river trots and brawls; and along its
course, where we should look for willows, puraos grow in clusters,
and make shadowy pools after an angler's heart. A vale more rich
and peaceful, sweeter air, a sweeter voice of rural sounds, I have
found nowhere. One circumstance alone might strike the
experienced: here is a convenient beach, deep soil, good water,
and yet nowhere any paepaes, nowhere any trace of island
habitation.
It is but a few years since this valley was a place choked with
jungle, the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two
clans laid claim to it--neither could substantiate the claim, and
the roads lay desert, or were only visited by men in arms. It is
for this very reason that it wears now so smiling an appearance:
cleared, planted, built upon, supplied with railways, boat-houses,
and bath-houses. For, being no man's land, it was the more readily
ceded to a stranger. The stranger was Captain John Hart: Ima
Hati, 'Broken-arm,' the natives call him, because when he first
visited the islands his arm was in a sling. Captain Hart, a man of
English birth, but an American subject, had conceived the idea of
cotton culture in the Marquesas during the American War, and was at
first rewarded with success. His plantation at Anaho was highly
productive; island cotton fetched a high price, and the natives
used to debate which was the stronger power, Ima Hati or the
French: deciding in favour of the captain, because, though the
French had the most ships, he had the more money.
He marked Taahauku for a suitable site, acquired it, and offered
the superintendence to Mr. Robert Stewart, a Fifeshire man, already
some time in the islands, who had just been ruined by a war on
Tauata. Mr. Stewart was somewhat averse to the adventure, having
some acquaintance with Atuona and its notorious chieftain, Moipu.
He had once landed there, he told me, about dusk, and found the
remains of a man and woman partly eaten. On his starting and
sickening at the sight, one of Moipu's young men picked up a human
foot, and provocatively staring at the stranger, grinned and
nibbled at the heel. None need be surprised if Mr. Stewart fled
incontinently to the bush, lay there all night in a great horror of
mind, and got off to sea again by daylight on the morrow. 'It was
always a bad place, Atuona,' commented Mr. Stewart, in his homely
Fifeshire voice. In spite of this dire introduction, he accepted
the captain's offer, was landed at Taahauku with three Chinamen,
and proceeded to clear the jungle.
War was pursued at that time, almost without interval, between the
men of Atuona and the men of Haamau; and one day, from the opposite
sides of the valley, battle--or I should rather say the noise of
battle--raged all the afternoon: the shots and insults of the
opposing clans passing from hill to hill over the heads of Mr.
Stewart and his Chinamen. There was no genuine fighting; it was
like a bicker of schoolboys, only some fool had given the children
guns. One man died of his exertions in running, the only casualty.
With night the shots and insults ceased; the men of Haamau
withdrew; and victory, on some occult principle, was scored to
Moipu. Perhaps, in consequence, there came a day when Moipu made a
feast, and a party from Haamau came under safe-conduct to eat of
it. These passed early by Taahauku, and some of Moipu's young men
were there to be a guard of honour. They were not long gone before
there came down from Haamau, a man, his wife, and a girl of twelve,
their daughter, bringing fungus. Several Atuona lads were hanging
round the store; but the day being one of truce none apprehended
danger. The fungus was weighed and paid for; the man of Haamau
proposed he should have his axe ground in the bargain; and Mr.
Stewart demurring at the trouble, some of the Atuona lads offered
to grind it for him, and set it on the wheel. While the axe was
grinding, a friendly native whispered Mr. Stewart to have a care of
himself, for there was trouble in hand; and, all at once, the man
of Haamau was seized, and his head and arm stricken from his body,
the head at one sweep of his own newly sharpened axe. In the first
alert, the girl escaped among the cotton; and Mr. Stewart, having
thrust the wife into the house and locked her in from the outside,
supposed the affair was over. But the business had not passed
without noise, and it reached the ears of an older girl who had
loitered by the way, and who now came hastily down the valley,
crying as she came for her father. Her, too, they seized and
beheaded; I know not what they had done with the axe, it was a
blunt knife that served their butcherly turn upon the girl; and the
blood spurted in fountains and painted them from head to foot.
Thus horrible from crime, the party returned to Atuona, carrying
the heads to Moipu. It may be fancied how the feast broke up; but
it is notable that the guests were honourably suffered to retire.
These passed back through Taahauku in extreme disorder; a little
after the valley began to be overrun with shouting and triumphing
braves; and a letter of warning coming at the same time to Mr.
Stewart, he and his Chinamen took refuge with the Protestant
missionary in Atuona. That night the store was gutted, and the
bodies cast in a pit and covered with leaves. Three days later the
schooner had come in; and things appearing quieter, Mr. Stewart and
the captain landed in Taahauku to compute the damage and to view
the grave, which was already indicated by the stench. While they
were so employed, a party of Moipu's young men, decked with red
flannel to indicate martial sentiments, came over the hills from
Atuona, dug up the bodies, washed them in the river, and carried
them away on sticks. That night the feast began.
Those who knew Mr. Stewart before this experience declare the man
to be quite altered. He stuck, however, to his post; and somewhat
later, when the plantation was already well established, and gave
employment to sixty Chinamen and seventy natives, he found himself
once more in dangerous times. The men of Haamau, it was reported,
had sworn to plunder and erase the settlement; letters came
continually from the Hawaiian missionary, who acted as intelligence
department; and for six weeks Mr. Stewart and three other whites
slept in the cotton-house at night in a rampart of bales, and (what
was their best defence) ostentatiously practised rifle-shooting by
day upon the beach. Natives were often there to watch them; the
practice was excellent; and the assault was never delivered--if it
ever was intended, which I doubt, for the natives are more famous
for false rumours than for deeds of energy. I was told the late
French war was a case in point; the tribes on the beach accusing
those in the mountains of designs which they had never the
hardihood to entertain. And the same testimony to their
backwardness in open battle reached me from all sides. Captain
Hart once landed after an engagement in a certain bay; one man had
his hand hurt, an old woman and two children had been slain; and
the captain improved the occasion by poulticing the hand, and
taunting both sides upon so wretched an affair. It is true these
wars were often merely formal--comparable with duels to the first
blood. Captain Hart visited a bay where such a war was being
carried on between two brothers, one of whom had been thought
wanting in civility to the guests of the other. About one-half of
the population served day about on alternate sides, so as to be
well with each when the inevitable peace should follow. The forts
of the belligerents were over against each other, and close by.
Pigs were cooking. Well-oiled braves, with well-oiled muskets,
strutted on the paepae or sat down to feast. No business, however
needful, could be done, and all thoughts were supposed to be
centred in this mockery of war. A few days later, by a regrettable
accident, a man was killed; it was felt at once the thing had gone
too far, and the quarrel was instantly patched up. But the more
serious wars were prosecuted in a similar spirit; a gift of pigs
and a feast made their inevitable end; the killing of a single man
was a great victory, and the murder of defenceless solitaries
counted a heroic deed.
The foot of the cliffs, about all these islands, is the place of
fishing. Between Taahauku and Atuona we saw men, but chiefly
women, some nearly naked, some in thin white or crimson dresses,
perched in little surf-beat promontories--the brown precipice
overhanging them, and the convolvulus overhanging that, as if to
cut them off the more completely from assistance. There they would
angle much of the morning; and as fast as they caught any fish, eat
them, raw and living, where they stood. It was such helpless ones
that the warriors from the opposite island of Tauata slew, and
carried home and ate, and were thereupon accounted mighty men of
valour. Of one such exploit I can give the account of an eye-
witness. 'Portuguese Joe,' Mr. Keane's cook, was once pulling an
oar in an Atuona boat, when they spied a stranger in a canoe with
some fish and a piece of tapu. The Atuona men cried upon him to
draw near and have a smoke. He complied, because, I suppose, he
had no choice; but he knew, poor devil, what he was coming to, and
(as Joe said) 'he didn't seem to care about the smoke.' A few
questions followed, as to where he came from, and what was his
business. These he must needs answer, as he must needs draw at the
unwelcome pipe, his heart the while drying in his bosom. And then,
of a sudden, a big fellow in Joe's boat leaned over, plucked the
stranger from his canoe, struck him with a knife in the neck--
inward and downward, as Joe showed in pantomime more expressive
than his words--and held him under water, like a fowl, until his
struggles ceased. Whereupon the long-pig was hauled on board, the
boat's head turned about for Atuona, and these Marquesan braves
pulled home rejoicing. Moipu was on the beach and rejoiced with
them on their arrival. Poor Joe toiled at his oar that day with a
white face, yet he had no fear for himself. 'They were very good
to me--gave me plenty grub: never wished to eat white man,' said
he.
If the most horrible experience was Mr. Stewart's, it was Captain
Hart himself who ran the nearest danger. He had bought a piece of
land from Timau, chief of a neighbouring bay, and put some Chinese
there to work. Visiting the station with one of the Godeffroys, he
found his Chinamen trooping to the beach in terror: Timau had
driven them out, seized their effects, and was in war attire with
his young men. A boat was despatched to Taahauku for
reinforcement; as they awaited her return, they could see, from the
deck of the schooner, Timau and his young men dancing the war-dance
on the hill-top till past twelve at night; and so soon as the boat
came (bringing three gendarmes, armed with chassepots, two white
men from Taahauku station, and some native warriors) the party set
out to seize the chief before he should awake. Day was not come,
and it was a very bright moonlight morning, when they reached the
hill-top where (in a house of palm-leaves) Timau was sleeping off
his debauch. The assailants were fully exposed, the interior of
the hut quite dark; the position far from sound. The gendarmes
knelt with their pieces ready, and Captain Hart advanced alone. As
he drew near the door he heard the snap of a gun cocking from
within, and in sheer self-defence--there being no other escape--
sprang into the house and grappled Timau. 'Timau, come with me!'
he cried. But Timau--a great fellow, his eyes blood-red with the
abuse of kava, six foot three in stature--cast him on one side; and
the captain, instantly expecting to be either shot or brained,
discharged his pistol in the dark. When they carried Timau out at
the door into the moonlight, he was already dead, and, upon this
unlooked-for termination of their sally, the whites appeared to
have lost all conduct, and retreated to the boats, fired upon by
the natives as they went. Captain Hart, who almost rivals Bishop
Dordillon in popularity, shared with him the policy of extreme
indulgence to the natives, regarding them as children, making light
of their defects, and constantly in favour of mild measures. The
death of Timau has thus somewhat weighed upon his mind; the more
so, as the chieftain's musket was found in the house unloaded. To
a less delicate conscience the matter will seem light. If a
drunken savage elects to cock a fire-arm, a gentleman advancing
towards him in the open cannot wait to make sure if it be charged.
I have touched on the captain's popularity. It is one of the
things that most strikes a stranger in the Marquesas. He comes
instantly on two names, both new to him, both locally famous, both
mentioned by all with affection and respect--the bishop's and the
captain's. It gave me a strong desire to meet with the survivor,
which was subsequently gratified--to the enrichment of these pages.
Long after that again, in the Place Dolorous--Molokai--I came once
more on the traces of that affectionate popularity. There was a
blind white leper there, an old sailor--'an old tough,' he called
himself--who had long sailed among the eastern islands. Him I used
to visit, and, being fresh from the scenes of his activity, gave
him the news. This (in the true island style) was largely a
chronicle of wrecks; and it chanced I mentioned the case of one not
very successful captain, and how he had lost a vessel for Mr. Hart;
thereupon the blind leper broke forth in lamentation. 'Did he lose
a ship of John Hart's?' he cried; 'poor John Hart! Well, I'm sorry
it was Hart's,' with needless force of epithet, which I neglect to
reproduce.
Perhaps, if Captain Hart's affairs had continued to prosper, his
popularity might have been different. Success wins glory, but it
kills affection, which misfortune fosters. And the misfortune
which overtook the captain's enterprise was truly singular. He was
at the top of his career. Ile Masse belonged to him, given by the
French as an indemnity for the robberies at Taahauku. But the Ile
Masse was only suitable for cattle; and his two chief stations were
Anaho, in Nuka-hiva, facing the north-east, and Taahauku in Hiva-
oa, some hundred miles to the southward, and facing the south-west.
Both these were on the same day swept by a tidal wave, which was
not felt in any other bay or island of the group. The south coast
of Hiva-oa was bestrewn with building timber and camphor-wood
chests, containing goods; which, on the promise of a reasonable
salvage, the natives very honestly brought back, the chests
apparently not opened, and some of the wood after it had been built
into their houses. But the recovery of such jetsam could not
affect the result. It was impossible the captain should withstand
this partiality of fortune; and with his fall the prosperity of the
Marquesas ended. Anaho is truly extinct, Taahauku but a shadow of
itself; nor has any new plantation arisen in their stead.
