Long-Pig Is The Polynesian Euphemism For Human
Flesh; And These Descendants Of Man-Eaters, A King's Son At Their
Head, Brought In The Pigs To Table As Of Old Their Grandfathers Had
Brought In Their Slain Enemies.
Every now and then the procession
halted in order that the bearers should have every advantage in
uttering particularly ferocious shouts of victory, of contempt for
their enemies, and of gustatory desire.
So Melville, two
generations ago, witnessed the bodies of slain Happar warriors,
wrapped in palm-leaves, carried to banquet at the Ti. At another
time, at the Ti, he "observed a curiously carved vessel of wood,"
and on looking into it his eyes "fell upon the disordered members of
a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and with
particles of flesh clinging to them here and there."
Cannibalism has often been regarded as a fairy story by
ultracivilized men who dislike, perhaps, the notion that their own
savage forebears have somewhere in the past been addicted to similar
practices. Captain Cook was rather sceptical upon the subject,
until, one day, in a harbour of New Zealand, he deliberately tested
the matter. A native happened to have brought on board, for sale, a
nice, sun-dried head. At Cook's orders strips of the flesh were cut
away and handed to the native, who greedily devoured them. To say
the least, Captain Cook was a rather thorough-going empiricist. At
any rate, by that act he supplied one ascertained fact of which
science had been badly in need. Little did he dream of the
existence of a certain group of islands, thousands of miles away,
where in subsequent days there would arise a curious suit at law,
when an old chief of Maui would be charged with defamation of
character because he persisted in asserting that his body was the
living repository of Captain Cook's great toe. It is said that the
plaintiffs failed to prove that the old chief was not the tomb of
the navigator's great toe, and that the suit was dismissed.
I suppose I shall not have the chance in these degenerate days to
see any long-pig eaten, but at least I am already the possessor of a
duly certified Marquesan calabash, oblong in shape, curiously
carved, over a century old, from which has been drunk the blood of
two shipmasters. One of those captains was a mean man. He sold a
decrepit whale-boat, as good as new what of the fresh white paint,
to a Marquesan chief. But no sooner had the captain sailed away
than the whale-boat dropped to pieces. It was his fortune, some
time afterwards, to be wrecked, of all places, on that particular
island. The Marquesan chief was ignorant of rebates and discounts;
but he had a primitive sense of equity and an equally primitive
conception of the economy of nature, and he balanced the account by
eating the man who had cheated him.
We started in the cool dawn for Typee, astride ferocious little
stallions that pawed and screamed and bit and fought one another
quite oblivious of the fragile humans on their backs and of the
slippery boulders, loose rocks, and yawning gorges. The way led up
an ancient road through a jungle of hau trees. On every side were
the vestiges of a one-time dense population. Wherever the eye could
penetrate the thick growth, glimpses were caught of stone walls and
of stone foundations, six to eight feet in height, built solidly
throughout, and many yards in width and depth. They formed great
stone platforms, upon which, at one time, there had been houses.
But the houses and the people were gone, and huge trees sank their
roots through the platforms and towered over the under-running
jungle. These foundations are called pae-paes - the pi-pis of
Melville, who spelled phonetically.
The Marquesans of the present generation lack the energy to hoist
and place such huge stones. Also, they lack incentive. There are
plenty of pae-paes to go around, with a few thousand unoccupied ones
left over. Once or twice, as we ascended the valley, we saw
magnificent pae-paes bearing on their general surface pitiful little
straw huts, the proportions being similar to a voting booth perched
on the broad foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops. For the
Marquesans are perishing, and, to judge from conditions at Taiohae,
the one thing that retards their destruction is the infusion of
fresh blood. A pure Marquesan is a rarity. They seem to be all
half-breeds and strange conglomerations of dozens of different
races. Nineteen able labourers are all the trader at Taiohae can
muster for the loading of copra on shipboard, and in their veins
runs the blood of English, American, Dane, German, French, Corsican,
Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Paumotan, Tahitian, and
Easter Islander. There are more races than there are persons, but
it is a wreckage of races at best. Life faints and stumbles and
gasps itself away. In this warm, equable clime - a truly terrestrial
paradise - where are never extremes of temperature and where the air
is like balm, kept ever pure by the ozone-laden southeast trade,
asthma, phthisis, and tuberculosis flourish as luxuriantly as the
vegetation. Everywhere, from the few grass huts, arises the racking
cough or exhausted groan of wasted lungs. Other horrible diseases
prosper as well, but the most deadly of all are those that attack
the lungs. There is a form of consumption called "galloping," which
is especially dreaded. In two months' time it reduces the strongest
man to a skeleton under a grave-cloth. In valley after valley the
last inhabitant has passed and the fertile soil has relapsed to
jungle. In Melville's day the valley of Hapaa (spelled by him
"Happar") was peopled by a strong and warlike tribe. A generation
later, it contained but two hundred persons. To-day it is an
untenanted, howling, tropical wilderness.
We climbed higher and higher in the valley, our unshod stallions
picking their steps on the disintegrating trail, which led in and
out through the abandoned pae-paes and insatiable jungle.
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