The Sight
Of Red Mountain Apples, The Ohias, Familiar To Us From Hawaii,
Caused A Native To Be Sent Climbing After Them.
And again he
climbed for cocoa-nuts.
I have drunk the cocoanuts of Jamaica and
of Hawaii, but I never knew how delicious such draught could be till
I drank it here in the Marquesas. Occasionally we rode under wild
limes and oranges - great trees which had survived the wilderness
longer than the motes of humans who had cultivated them.
We rode through endless thickets of yellow-pollened cassi - if riding
it could be called; for those fragrant thickets were inhabited by
wasps. And such wasps! Great yellow fellows the size of small
canary birds, darting through the air with behind them drifting a
bunch of legs a couple of inches long. A stallion abruptly stands
on his forelegs and thrusts his hind legs skyward. He withdraws
them from the sky long enough to make one wild jump ahead, and then
returns them to their index position. It is nothing. His thick
hide has merely been punctured by a flaming lance of wasp virility.
Then a second and a third stallion, and all the stallions, begin to
cavort on their forelegs over the precipitous landscape. Swat! A
white-hot poniard penetrates my cheek. Swat again!! I am stabbed
in the neck. I am bringing up the rear and getting more than my
share. There is no retreat, and the plunging horses ahead, on a
precarious trail, promise little safety. My horse overruns
Charmian's horse, and that sensitive creature, fresh-stung at the
psychological moment, planks one of his hoofs into my horse and the
other hoof into me. I thank my stars that he is not steel-shod, and
half-arise from the saddle at the impact of another flaming dagger.
I am certainly getting more than my share, and so is my poor horse,
whose pain and panic are only exceeded by mine.
"Get out of the way! I'm coming!" I shout, frantically dashing my
cap at the winged vipers around me.
On one side of the trail the landscape rises straight up. On the
other side it sinks straight down. The only way to get out of my
way is to keep on going. How that string of horses kept their feet
is a miracle; but they dashed ahead, over-running one another,
galloping, trotting, stumbling, jumping, scrambling, and kicking
methodically skyward every time a wasp landed on them. After a
while we drew breath and counted our injuries. And this happened
not once, nor twice, but time after time. Strange to say, it never
grew monotonous. I know that I, for one, came through each brush
with the undiminished zest of a man flying from sudden death. No;
the pilgrim from Taiohae to Typee will never suffer from ennui on
the way.
At last we arose above the vexation of wasps. It was a matter of
altitude, however, rather than of fortitude. All about us lay the
jagged back-bones of ranges, as far as the eye could see, thrusting
their pinnacles into the trade-wind clouds. Under us, from the way
we had come, the Snark lay like a tiny toy on the calm water of
Taiohae Bay. Ahead we could see the inshore indentation of
Comptroller Bay. We dropped down a thousand feet, and Typee lay
beneath us. "Had a glimpse of the gardens of paradise been revealed
to me I could scarcely have been more ravished with the sight" - so
said Melville on the moment of his first view of the valley. He saw
a garden. We saw a wilderness. Where were the hundred groves of
the breadfruit tree he saw? We saw jungle, nothing but jungle, with
the exception of two grass huts and several clumps of cocoanuts
breaking the primordial green mantle. Where was the Ti of Mehevi,
the bachelors' hall, the palace where women were taboo, and where he
ruled with his lesser chieftains, keeping the half-dozen dusty and
torpid ancients to remind them of the valorous past? From the swift
stream no sounds arose of maids and matrons pounding tapa. And
where was the hut that old Narheyo eternally builded? In vain I
looked for him perched ninety feet from the ground in some tall
cocoanut, taking his morning smoke.
We went down a zigzag trail under overarching, matted jungle, where
great butterflies drifted by in the silence. No tattooed savage
with club and javelin guarded the path; and when we forded the
stream, we were free to roam where we pleased. No longer did the
taboo, sacred and merciless, reign in that sweet vale. Nay, the
taboo still did reign, a new taboo, for when we approached too near
the several wretched native women, the taboo was uttered warningly.
And it was well. They were lepers. The man who warned us was
afflicted horribly with elephantiasis. All were suffering from lung
trouble. The valley of Typee was the abode of death, and the dozen
survivors of the tribe were gasping feebly the last painful breaths
of the race.
Certainly the battle had not been to the strong, for once the
Typeans were very strong, stronger than the Happars, stronger than
the Taiohaeans, stronger than all the tribes of Nuku-hiva. The word
"typee," or, rather, "taipi," originally signified an eater of human
flesh. But since all the Marquesans were human-flesh eaters, to be
so designated was the token that the Typeans were the human-flesh
eaters par excellence. Not alone to Nuku-hiva did the Typean
reputation for bravery and ferocity extend. In all the islands of
the Marquesas the Typeans were named with dread. Man could not
conquer them. Even the French fleet that took possession of the
Marquesas left the Typeans alone. Captain Porter, of the frigate
Essex, once invaded the valley. His sailors and marines were
reinforced by two thousand warriors of Happar and Taiohae. They
penetrated quite a distance into the valley, but met with so fierce
a resistance that they were glad to retreat and get away in their
flotilla of boats and war-canoes.
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