CHAPTER II--FAKARAVA: AN ATOLL AT HAND
By a little before noon we were running down the coast of our
destination, Fakarava: the air very light, the sea near smooth;
though still we were accompanied by a continuous murmur from the
beach, like the sound of a distant train. The isle is of a huge
longitude, the enclosed lagoon thirty miles by ten or twelve, and
the coral tow-path, which they call the land, some eighty or ninety
miles by (possibly) one furlong. That part by which we sailed was
all raised; the underwood excellently green, the topping wood of
coco-palms continuous--a mark, if I had known it, of man's
intervention. For once more, and once more unconsciously, we were
within hail of fellow-creatures, and that vacant beach was but a
pistol-shot from the capital city of the archipelago. But the life
of an atoll, unless it be enclosed, passes wholly on the shores of
the lagoon; it is there the villages are seated, there the canoes
ply and are drawn up; and the beach of the ocean is a place
accursed and deserted, the fit scene only for wizardry and
shipwreck, and in the native belief a haunting ground of murderous
spectres.
By and by we might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods
ceased; a glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald
shoal the mark of entrance. As we drew near we met a little run of
sea--the private sea of the lagoon having there its origin and end,
and here, in the jaws of the gateway, trying vain conclusions with
the more majestic heave of the Pacific. The Casco scarce avowed a
shock; but there are times and circumstances when these harbour
mouths of inland basins vomit floods, deflecting, burying, and
dismasting ships. For, conceive a lagoon perfectly sealed but in
the one point, and that of merely navigable width; conceive the
tide and wind to have heaped for hours together in that coral fold
a superfluity of waters, and the tide to change and the wind fall--
the open sluice of some great reservoirs at home will give an image
of the unstemmable effluxion.
We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were
craned over the rail. For the water, shoaling under our board,
became changed in a moment to surprising hues of blue and grey; and
in its transparency the coral branched and blossomed, and the fish
of the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and striped,
and even beaked like parrots. I have paid in my time to view many
curiosities; never one so curious as that first sight over the
ship's rail in the lagoon of Fakarava. But let not the reader be
deceived with hope. I have since entered, I suppose, some dozen
atolls in different parts of the Pacific, and the experience has
never been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency of
submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, have not
enraptured me again.
Before we could raise our eyes from that engaging spectacle the
schooner had slipped betwixt the pierheads of the reef, and was
already quite committed to the sea within. The containing shores
are so little erected, and the lagoon itself is so great, that, for
the more part, it seemed to extend without a check to the horizon.
Here and there, indeed, where the reef carried an inlet, like a
signet-ring upon a finger, there would be a pencilling of palms;
here and there, the green wall of wood ran solid for a length of
miles; and on the port hand, under the highest grove of trees, a
few houses sparkled white--Rotoava, the metropolitan settlement of
the Paumotus. Hither we beat in three tacks, and came to an anchor
close in shore, in the first smooth water since we had left San
Francisco, five fathoms deep, where a man might look overboard all
day at the vanishing cable, the coral patches, and the many-
coloured fish.
Fakarava was chosen to be the seat of Government from nautical
considerations only. It is eccentrically situate; the productions,
even for a low island, poor; the population neither many nor--for
Low Islanders--industrious. But the lagoon has two good passages,
one to leeward, one to windward, so that in all states of the wind
it can be left and entered, and this advantage, for a government of
scattered islands, was decisive. A pier of coral, landing-stairs,
a harbour light upon a staff and pillar, and two spacious
Government bungalows in a handsome fence, give to the northern end
of Rotoava a great air of consequence. This is confirmed on the
one hand by an empty prison, on the other by a gendarmerie pasted
over with hand-bills in Tahitian, land-law notices from Papeete,
and republican sentiments from Paris, signed (a little after date)
'Jules Grevy, Perihidente.' Quite at the far end a belfried
Catholic chapel concludes the town; and between, on a smooth floor
of white coral sand and under the breezy canopy of coco-palms, the
houses of the natives stand irregularly scattered, now close on the
lagoon for the sake of the breeze, now back under the palms for
love of shadow.
Not a soul was to be seen. But for the thunder of the surf on the
far side, it seemed you might have heard a pin drop anywhere about
that capital city. There was something thrilling in the unexpected
silence, something yet more so in the unexpected sound. Here
before us a sea reached to the horizon, rippling like an inland
mere; and behold! close at our back another sea assaulted with
assiduous fury the reverse of the position. At night the lantern
was run up and lit a vacant pier. In one house lights were seen
and voices heard, where the population (I was told) sat playing
cards. A little beyond, from deep in the darkness of the palm-
grove, we saw the glow and smelt the aromatic odour of a coal of
cocoa-nut husk, a relic of the evening kitchen. Crickets sang;
some shrill thing whistled in a tuft of weeds; and the mosquito
hummed and stung. There was no other trace that night of man,
bird, or insect in the isle. The moon, now three days old, and as
yet but a silver crescent on a still visible sphere, shone through
the palm canopy with vigorous and scattered lights. The alleys
where we walked were smoothed and weeded like a boulevard; here and
there were plants set out; here and there dusky cottages clustered
in the shadow, some with verandahs. A public garden by night, a
rich and fashionable watering-place in a by-season, offer sights
and vistas not dissimilar. And still, on the one side, stretched
the lapping mere, and from the other the deep sea still growled in
the night. But it was most of all on board, in the dead hours,
when I had been better sleeping, that the spell of Fakarava seized
and held me. The moon was down. The harbour lantern and two of
the greater planets drew vari-coloured wakes on the lagoon. From
shore the cheerful watch-cry of cocks rang out at intervals above
the organ-point of surf. And the thought of this depopulated
capital, this protracted thread of annular island with its crest of
coco-palms and fringe of breakers, and that tranquil inland sea
that stretched before me till it touched the stars, ran in my head
for hours with delight.
So long as I stayed upon that isle these thoughts were constant. I
lay down to sleep, and woke again with an unblunted sense of my
surroundings. I was never weary of calling up the image of that
narrow causeway, on which I had my dwelling, lying coiled like a
serpent, tail to mouth, in the outrageous ocean, and I was never
weary of passing--a mere quarter-deck parade--from the one side to
the other, from the shady, habitable shores of the lagoon to the
blinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach. The
sense of insecurity in such a thread of residence is more than
fanciful. Hurricanes and tidal waves over-leap these humble
obstacles; Oceanus remembers his strength, and, where houses stood
and palms flourished, shakes his white beard again over the barren
coral. Fakarava itself has suffered; the trees immediately beyond
my house were all of recent replantation; and Anaa is only now
recovered from a heavier stroke. I knew one who was then dwelling
in the isle. He told me that he and two ship captains walked to
the sea beach. There for a while they viewed the oncoming
breakers, till one of the captains clapped suddenly his hand before
his eyes and cried aloud that he could endure no longer to behold
them. This was in the afternoon; in the dark hours of the night
the sea burst upon the island like a flood; the settlement was
razed all but the church and presbytery; and, when day returned,
the survivors saw themselves clinging in an abattis of uprooted
coco-palms and ruined houses.
Danger is but a small consideration. But men are more nicely
sensible of a discomfort; and the atoll is a discomfortable home.
There are some, and these probably ancient, where a deep soil has
formed and the most valuable fruit-trees prosper. I have walked in
one, with equal admiration and surprise, through a forest of huge
breadfruits, eating bananas and stumbling among taro as I went.
This was in the atoll of Namorik in the Marshall group, and stands
alone in my experience. To give the opposite extreme, which is yet
far more near the average, I will describe the soil and productions
of Fakarava. The surface of that narrow strip is for the more part
of broken coral lime-stone, like volcanic clinkers, and
excruciating to the naked foot; in some atolls, I believe, not in
Fakarava, it gives a fine metallic ring when struck. Here and
there you come upon a bank of sand, exceeding fine and white, and
these parts are the least productive. The plants (such as they
are) spring from and love the broken coral, whence they grow with
that wonderful verdancy that makes the beauty of the atoll from the
sea. The coco-palm in particular luxuriates in that stern solum,
striking down his roots to the brackish, percolated water, and
bearing his green head in the wind with every evidence of health
and pleasure. And yet even the coco-palm must be helped in infancy
with some extraneous nutriment, and through much of the low
archipelago there is planted with each nut a piece of ship's
biscuit and a rusty nail. The pandanus comes next in importance,
being also a food tree; and he, too, does bravely. A green bush
called miki runs everywhere; occasionally a purao is seen; and
there are several useless weeds. According to M. Cuzent, the whole
number of plants on an atoll such as Fakarava will scarce exceed,
even if it reaches to, one score. Not a blade of grass appears;
not a grain of humus, save when a sack or two has been imported to
make the semblance of a garden; such gardens as bloom in cities on
the window-sill. Insect life is sometimes dense; a cloud o'
mosquitoes, and, what is far worse, a plague of flies blackening
our food, has sometimes driven us from a meal on Apemama; and even
in Fakarava the mosquitoes were a pest. The land crab may be seen
scuttling to his hole, and at night the rats besiege the houses and
the artificial gardens. The crab is good eating; possibly so is
the rat; I have not tried. Pandanus fruit is made, in the
Gilberts, into an agreeable sweetmeat, such as a man may trifle
with at the end of a long dinner; for a substantial meal I have no
use for it. The rest of the food-supply, in a destitute atoll such
as Fakarava, can be summed up in the favourite jest of the
archipelago--cocoa-nut beefsteak. Cocoa-nut green, cocoa-nut ripe,
cocoa-nut germinated; cocoa-nut to eat and cocoa-nut to drink;
cocoa-nut raw and cooked, cocoa-nut hot and cold--such is the bill
of fare. And some of the entrees are no doubt delicious. The
germinated nut, cooked in the shell and eaten with a spoon, forms a
good pudding; cocoa-nut milk--the expressed juice of a ripe nut,
not the water of a green one--goes well in coffee, and is a
valuable adjunct in cookery through the South Seas; and cocoa-nut
salad, if you be a millionaire, and can afford to eat the value of
a field of corn for your dessert, is a dish to be remembered with
affection. But when all is done there is a sameness, and the
Israelites of the low islands murmur at their manna.
The reader may think I have forgot the sea. The two beaches do
certainly abound in life, and they are strangely different. In the
lagoon the water shallows slowly on a bottom of the fine slimy
sand, dotted with clumps of growing coral. Then comes a strip of
tidal beach on which the ripples lap. In the coral clumps the
great holy-water clam (Tridacna) grows plentifully; a little deeper
lie the beds of the pearl-oyster and sail the resplendent fish that
charmed us at our entrance; and these are all more or less
vigorously coloured. But the other shells are white like lime, or
faintly tinted with a little pink, the palest possible display;
many of them dead besides, and badly rolled. On the ocean side, on
the mounds of the steep beach, over all the width of the reef right
out to where the surf is bursting, in every cranny, under every
scattered fragment of the coral, an incredible plenty of marine
life displays the most wonderful variety and brilliancy of hues.
The reef itself has no passage of colour but is imitated by some
shell. Purple and red and white, and green and yellow, pied and
striped and clouded, the living shells wear in every combination
the livery of the dead reef--if the reef be dead--so that the eye
is continually baffled and the collector continually deceived. I
have taken shells for stones and stones for shells, the one as
often as the other. A prevailing character of the coral is to be
dotted with small spots of red, and it is wonderful how many
varieties of shell have adopted the same fashion and donned the
disguise of the red spot. A shell I had found in plenty in the
Marquesas I found here also unchanged in all things else, but there
were the red spots. A lively little crab wore the same markings.
The case of the hermit or soldier crab was more conclusive, being
the result of conscious choice. This nasty little wrecker,
scavenger, and squatter has learned the value of a spotted house;
so it be of the right colour he will choose the smallest shard,
tuck himself in a mere corner of a broken whorl, and go about the
world half naked; but I never found him in this imperfect armour
unless it was marked with the red spot.
Some two hundred yards distant is the beach of the lagoon. Collect
the shells from each, set them side by side, and you would suppose
they came from different hemispheres; the one so pale, the other so
brilliant; the one prevalently white, the other of a score of hues,
and infected with the scarlet spot like a disease. This seems the
more strange, since the hermit crabs pass and repass the island,
and I have met them by the Residency well, which is about central,
journeying either way. Without doubt many of the shells in the
lagoon are dead. But why are they dead? Without doubt the living
shells have a very different background set for imitation. But why
are these so different? We are only on the threshold of the
mysteries.
Either beach, I have said, abounds with life. On the sea-side and
in certain atolls this profusion of vitality is even shocking: the
rock under foot is mined with it. I have broken off--notably in
Funafuti and Arorai--great lumps of ancient weathered rock that
rang under my blows like iron, and the fracture has been full of
pendent worms as long as my hand, as thick as a child's finger, of
a slightly pinkish white, and set as close as three or even four to
the square inch. Even in the lagoon, where certain shell-fish seem
to sicken, others (it is notorious) prosper exceedingly and make
the riches of these islands. Fish, too, abound; the lagoon is a
closed fish-pond, such as might rejoice the fancy of an abbot;
sharks swarm there, and chiefly round the passages, to feast upon
this plenty, and you would suppose that man had only to prepare his
angle. Alas! it is not so. Of these painted fish that came in
hordes about the entering Casco, some bore poisonous spines, and
others were poisonous if eaten. The stranger must refrain, or take
his chance of painful and dangerous sickness. The native, on his
own isle, is a safe guide; transplant him to the next, and he is
helpless as yourself. For it is a question both of time and place.
A fish caught in a lagoon may be deadly; the same fish caught the
same day at sea, and only a few hundred yards without the passage,
will be wholesome eating: in a neighbouring isle perhaps the case
will be reversed; and perhaps a fortnight later you shall be able
to eat of them indifferently from within and from without.
According to the natives, these bewildering vicissitudes are ruled
by the movement of the heavenly bodies. The beautiful planet Venus
plays a great part in all island tales and customs; and among other
functions, some of them more awful, she regulates the season of
good fish. With Venus in one phase, as we had her, certain fish
were poisonous in the lagoon: with Venus in another, the same fish
was harmless and a valued article of diet. White men explain these
changes by the phases of the coral.
It adds a last touch of horror to the thought of this precarious
annular gangway in the sea, that even what there is of it is not of
honest rock, but organic, part alive, part putrescent; even the
clean sea and the bright fish about it poisoned, the most stubborn
boulder burrowed in by worms, the lightest dust venomous as an
apothecary's drugs.
