Chapter VI: Part 6

We are settled here for an uncertain time, perhaps three days. This is the political capital of Samoa, and we are occupying the house of the great orator of the islands, important by his influence, though not so great a chief as several others by descent or by control, or even by physical superiority, that great proof of eminence in communities like these, where the chiefs seem to have reserved for themselves a size and weight that recall the idea of heroic days. Certainly the first time that I saw a well-chosen dozen together, as I did two days ago at our last resting place, all sitting spaced out, as if for a decoration on a frieze, silent and indifferent, or speaking occasionally without raising their voices, with heavy arms resting on great thighs, and with the movement of neck and shoulders of men conscious of importance, the recall of Homeric story made me ask myself which one might be Ajax, and which the other, and if such a one might do for Agamemnon. Fine too, as some of the heads were, they were only relatively important, as with the Greek statues that we have, and that we know quite well and intimately, even though their heads be missing. The whole body has had an external meaning, has been used as ours is no longer, to express a feeling or to maintain a reserve which we only look for in a face.

And as I am writing, while the household is enjoying its evening relaxation and preparing for the night, everything about me repeats to me this theme of all being done with the whole body. About an hour ago prayers were said and all sat around while the regular form was repeated, and then our young hostess prayed an extempore prayer commending us all to the care of God. Some words I can catch, but the intonation is sufficient. It is a prayer cadenced as well as the most consummate of clergymen could manage, and repeated without the slightest hesitation. Then she stretched herself out, with her head on the Samoan pillow, and talked with some young male acquaintance outside the hut whose head just appears over the barrier that runs between the pillars, for our house is placed higher than usual. She talked with Adams who is lying by her, and occasionally she criticises the game that is going on near her at that end of the house. I have only followed the little things happening by fits and starts, as I have made some sketches and have been writing letters, but I make out that the household is playing some game in which some motion or gesture has to be duplicated or matched, and that the beaten side, for there are two rows of players, is to dance as a forfeit. I say that this is the household, I mean that I take it for granted, though I see that one of our boatmen is among them, and that a couple of children have dropped in. The duenna of our young lady is also there. Sometimes I see her and sometimes I do not, but I know she is there on watch. But a _siva_ has been organized slowly, a household unofficial _siva_, begun in little patches--somebody humming something and several beating hands. Tunes or songs are taken up and discarded, and sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, stands up to sketch some motions. At last they appear to have got under way, and I see them swing and dance, with little clothing and much clapping of hands, at the other end of the house. And everybody joins in: even the children beat time and take up the words--and the two elder women are the most enthusiastic and full of energy. Occasionally a burst of laughter salutes what I take to be a mistake or some wild caper that seems funny to them. Faauli, at last, after having pretended to sleep or to talk, so as to appear to herself to have done something, sits up and takes more interest. By and by she sketches out some steps in an indolent manner--soon she begins in earnest, and with one of the performers goes through an energetic dance, slipping her upper clothing for greater ease. The clapping and beating time comes fast and furious from every one, and laughter and small shrieks replace the gentle monotone and seriousness of the evening prayer. At last she sits down suddenly, her face rather overcast: (her name means “Black Cloud that Comes up Suddenly”). She has hurt her foot apparently, for turning round to see why all has stopped, I see her bent over and looking at a toe. Note that she does this as easily as a baby with us--her face comes down on her foot raised halfway to meet it. As I come up, she shows me that she has torn off the larger part of a nail, and is paring off the remainder evenly against the exposed surface of flesh. I offer her scissors which she uses with indifference, as we might cut off superfluous hair; and apparently more from politeness and obedience than from necessity, she accepts my court-plaster. Then being properly mended, she sits down to play cards while I resume my writing. Now here has been something that explains some sides of these good people; an absence of nervousness and insensibility to pain--for to most of us such a small accident would have been very painful and sickening. Before this the dance had been merely an outlet for action, as natural and unpremeditated as any other motion. The entire body has been called into play: from the ends of the fingers to the toes of the feet, all the exterior muscles have been playing gently for some two hours, with almost every person present, whether they sat or stood. This constant gentle exercise must go far toward giving the smooth even fullness that marks them. And meanwhile, too, they have decorated themselves; some one has brought out garlands, and they have been worn: flowers have been put in the hair, as if to mark that this is not work but play.

And now that all is quiet, I shall try to resume my itinerary, and recall small matters that are fading away, and becoming so confused from repetition that it requires an effort for me to distinguish this _siva_ from that _siva_, and to remember what _taupo_ it was who danced well, and what one it was who danced ill.

I was writing last in Iva, on our first day there, Sunday. It is now Thursday night.

Monday morning at Iva we were up early, before the sunrise, waked by the red glow of the dawn that calls one up easily from the hard bed of double mats laid on the floor of small stones. Every one was up, people were moving about, probably most had had their early bath, for they were returning with wet clothes, or with their garments spread over them like a veil. So that we scrambled over the stone wall that seems so anomalous and unreasonable here. But they not only divide village from village, but also prevent the straying of that roaming property, the pig, that wanders about the village and the forest also, picking up everything of course. To see a pig picking out the flesh of the cocoanut has been one of the small amusements of this afternoon, and last night, besides the invariable dog, pigs came into our house and snuffled at the faces of Charlie and Awoki, who lay outside of the mosquito netting. The path over the fences brought us to the bathing pool opening to the sea on one side only, where among black rocks the fresh water runs up to meet the tide, filling in the pool. There we went in and swam about, watched by many of the smaller villagers, girls and boys who were curious about the manners of the white people. And I was able to admire the skill, though unable to rival it, with which the native bathers draped themselves as they rose from the water, so that man or woman was clothed as he or she stepped on shore.

By the time we returned, our mosquito nettings had been put aside, the mats swept out, and Awoki was bringing us the tea and brown bread, which, with such native food as we liked, made our meals. Fish there was and yam and taro, and some preparations of cocoanut. And there were cocoanuts for their milk for which I do not care, but there was no water yet, the water in the two pools near the sea, edged with black stones, being blackish until the change of tide should leave the spring to fill up by itself.

Then our host came in and told us that we might rest that morning: that in the afternoon there would be a reception, a sort of review or “fantasia,” and presents of food would be given and speeches made, and songs and dances, the whole apparently included under the general title of the _talolo_ which was to be given us. So we waited peacefully; I sketched the girls in the neighbouring house, who were at work making the wreaths, the garlands, the complicated flower girdles that should be worn later in the day, and perhaps at night, for there were murmurs of a night _siva_. But I knew that our host was a church member, and that the _siva_ is not encouraged, neither the _siva_, “fa Samoa,” Samoan way, the Samoan _siva_, nor the _siva_ of the Europeans, which we call round dancing; for had not Faatulia, the wife of our leader, Seumanu, been threatened with excommunication for dancing in her innocence in European ways at the Consul’s Fourth of July ball. Meanwhile my models across the way in the shadow posed badly: they were always moving, or they came across the way to see what we

were at. For somebody would stop in and look at us, and go give the news--a little pile of small boys and girls, three rows deep, sat respectfully under the bread-fruit trees watching us. But somehow or other the morning wore away, and by two o’clock we were told that all was ready, and that we had better come to the house chosen for us to occupy during the ceremony. Meanwhile, behind the trees that closed in the sight (for the village was placed, if I may so describe it, in an irregular open grove of many kinds of trees), we had seen for the last hour or so, dressed-up figures moving about; men with large green garlands, and green cinctures around their waists stiffened out and made larger by great folds of new bark-cloth, or by the fine wearing mats which are the most precious possession of the Samoan: some of them with guns carried with pride, for these were men who had been victorious and had beaten off the bullying German.

And now we took our places in the circular house which looked like a pavilion, and which stood on the east of the large open space near the church. Opposite us perhaps some two hundred feet or more was another house, and others spread to right and left, leaving a large space ending on one side near the church, whose white façade had written on it its name, Lupeanoa, Noah’s Dove--enclosed by a little clump of trees to the left, where we could see figures moving with great swaying of leaf girdles and waist-mats--and the occasional beat of a war-drum came from further back.

We were seated, all facing toward the open space, the next house filled with women and children: Seumanu and our host and other people of importance near us, and the rest of the house packed, but not too closely, behind us. Out on the grass and near trees people sat, mostly women. Others moved slowly to take their places, showing some vestiges of yesterday’s Sunday in their hats and long gowns.

Then rushed across them a man all blacked, with a high white turban bound to his head, with green strips of leaves, a few leaves for a girdle, and waving a paddle. This was a friend of Seu’s--a funny man and joker, with a hand maimed or deformed--the deformed in such communities take things gayly and are jokers. He shrieked out things that caused shouts of laughter, and repeated “_Alofa_ Atamo!” From behind the church came out a mass of warriors, with banana leaves in their hair, and wearing girdles of the long green leaves of the _ti_: their backs were streaked with white lines following the spine and the ribs, and their faces and bodies were blacked. They carried their rifles high and discharged them into the air, then cantered past and away. Again the buffoon and again the warriors.

Meanwhile in the distance, in the opening of trees, we could

see other warriors: behind them the drum and the little fife made a curious war music, and a peculiar shout and call with a short cadence came from the men. Unconcernedly a girl moved across the opening in front, intent on something else, and a hunch-backed dwarf, with enormous wide shoulders and long legs edged with green leaves, came to us and shouted “_alofa!_” Then six warriors again emerged from the grove, swinging their clubs, and marched back leaving the green space before us empty and silent.

Slowly now, moving step by step, the mass of people behind the trees came out, so that they could be seen. In front of the men and of the music a girl, with black, shaggy waist garment, like thin fur, with long red necklaces of beads, and flowers in her hair, danced slowly to the tune, crossing and uncrossing her feet in a hopping step, and swinging with both hands a slight club in front of her, as a drum major might move his stick. Slowly she advanced, escorted by two men clad in mats and garlands, upon whose heads stood out a mass of yellow hair, like the cap of a grenadier, supported by circles of shells around the forehead. They also kept time to the music, but did not repeat the girl’s monotonous step that made the central point of interest to which the eye always returned.

This girl was the _taupo_, the virgin of the village, dancing and marching in her official place at the head of the warriors--like Taillefer, the Norman minstrel who began the battle of Hastings. When she had moved slowly a few yards, one could see that behind in the crowd there were two other girls representing other villages, who also repeated these movements, while some of the men danced and others stepped slowly with crossed arms, holding their clubs and muskets. And the virgin danced forward and passed, and then up the slope toward us, followed by the other girls, and all saluted us; when the whole assembly in the field came up suddenly and threw down before us leaf baskets containing taro and yams, and cooked things wrapped up in leaves, and fish, and a number of little sucking pigs, with hind legs tied, that struggled up and down in the heaps of leaves. As each person threw his load down he stalked away gravely and took a seat somewhere in the distance. All became silent. I could see the _taupos_ moving off with that peculiar walk of the dancer who is resting. A warrior with high white turban of bark cloth sat down against a tree near us, without looking to the right or left, his gun against his shoulder, and smoked gravely, while a girl, his daughter perhaps, leaned affectionately against him. Meanwhile the sucking pigs had been escaping with hind-legs tied, and every now and then Charlie pulled them back into place.

Then rose the orator, the _tulafale_, from the centre of the three rows of men now seated opposite to us, across the green space, and from two hundred feet away, addressed us slowly as he leaned upon his stick, and seemed not to raise his voice beyond what was absolute necessity. But the cadence always rose in the last words, so that the effect to the ear was of a distinct, emphatic assertion. Then he added, “This is all,” and sat down, apparently inattentive and indifferent. Our turn came next. Anai, the chief, translated to us the usual speech of great gratitude to America for having saved them from slavery and from the Germans, and compliments to us all, with prayers to God to have us in his holy keeping. Then a few things were suggested between us, and our political man said what was necessary, and alas, even more: for how can the United States promise anything--that may depend on sugar--or an election, or at any rate is merely a matter of barter? Anai stepped out from the house and repeated all this in Samoan, speaking also quite gently, with little raising of the voice. Nobody seemed to listen, nobody to care, but this was only apparent. All heard and had listened.

Then our own men, who had been hidden somewhere, sprang upon the presents and sorted them: one of them stood up and called them out: so much of this, so much of that, to give full acknowledgment for liberality. Then another spring, and all was carried away, even to the struggling, sucking pigs that could not be made to understand.

Momentary peace settled over everything, and we had begun to ask questions and to sketch, when we were told that now we should have a _siva_, that several villages would appear in it by their performers, as they had appeared in the military display. Men came up garlanded and cinctured in flowers and leaves, and sat down in double rows before us, some turning toward us, others away. Out of their number first one, then others arose and sat down again in order, fronting us, and the _siva_ began; six handsome young men, singing and swaying about upon their hips, to a chant for which time was beaten behind them.

The sun was setting; tired out and amused we walked back in the crowd, stopping to exchange _alofas_ with belated warriors who showed us their guns and occasional wounds, which with the Samoan idea of a joke they pretended had been caused by running against wire fences.

We had seen for the first time a pageantry of savage war, in a soft light, in the most peaceful and idyllic of landscapes, so that it was hard to realize again that this was not all a theatre scene, a fête champêtre--a play in the open air. There was nothing to contradict this unreality but the marks of ugly gashes on the arms and chests of the men and the

recall of the savage melody, which was undeniably a war song, requiring no explanation as to its meaning.

In the house we ate our meal spread out on banana leaves, two of the _taupos_ coming in to help us by breaking the taro and yams, and tearing the fish and fowls. Then while wishing for nothing but bed and rest, and closed eyes, we were told that there would be a night _siva_ in our honour, and that other _taupos_ would figure in it. There was nothing to do but yield, and with each a _taupo_ to accompany us, we went back to the house that we had occupied in the afternoon. It was already half filled with people, occupying one side of it. I sat down against an outside post, alongside of my _taupo_, next to whom Seumanu reclined at length with another girl, an old acquaintance, near him, and I tried to keep awake while the _siva_ went on enthusiastically. At times I would start with some new figure or more picturesque effect, or when fresh fuel was added to the cocoanut fire that fit the scene within. Along the posts of the exterior sat chiefs watching the dance: behind them outside, a crowd of people in the moonlight, and many heads of youngsters. Occasionally a chief would say, “Some one a cigarette or a light,” and a boy darted into the house through the dancers, plunged for the light, and returned with it to the great man who had asked.

When the _taupos_, big and good natured, had danced, we drowsily asked them to sit alongside of us, while the _siva_ of the men went on. Between two, as I became more and more sleepy, I was fortunate in finding comfort and support from my first neighbour, against whose big shoulder I reclined, my arm supported upon the weight of her knees--all mine might have been thrown upon her massive form without apparent inconvenience. A gentle tap now and then, and a gentle _alofa_ told me that I was all right, and could go to sleep while making believe to look on. But the girls, drowsy as they were, were appreciative of the men’s dances, and so was Seu, who called out over and over again, _mālie_ (bravo) as if he had not seen thousands of _sivas_, which now, having become “missionary,” he does not attend. I knew that I was interested in the intervals of sleep, but all has faded into a sort of disconnected dream. I can only remember getting out into the bright moonlight, and that it made a silver haze outside during the dances. We had been obliged toward midnight to make a speech, with thanks, protesting the fatigue of travel as an excuse for not remaining. The Samoans will sit up all night, especially in their favourite moonlight: they can sleep during the day, and apparently always do so. Around our house, until we had blown out the light, and even for some time after, rows of people sat watching us in the light of the moon: the people sauntered about, or sat in the shade of the trees, with sharp-edged leaves that made the scene look, as usual, like the stage-setting of a fairy opera.

* * * * *

The next morning we were to leave for the next important place, Sapapali, the home of the Malietoa, the princes who have been for a long time the principal chiefs of these islands, and who are now represented by the present king. This is a rude definition; as I have told you elsewhere, the question of chiefhood and sovereignty here is one not easily represented or defined by our words. At Sapapali, the ancestral home, we should be received by Aigā, the King’s niece, and consequently a young person of the highest rank, indeed, I suppose the greatest lady of the land. With us this would be the Queen or the Royal Princess, or the heir to the throne. But here blood and descent are all and in the direct line. This young person was next to Malietoa as being of sufficient blood.

Our arrival was to happen about noon, so that, as in Samoan phrase, it was only about half an hour’s walk, we were to leave punctually at ten o’clock. Early rising took us again to the black pool surrounded by high trees, where two of us bathed, watched and escorted by two little damsels with whom the other one of us flirted. I myself was too much occupied with the difficult question of keeping on, while swimming, the fathom of cloth they call lavalava; and afterward of adjusting it in the water, after swimming for it when it had floated away, and then on coming out, receiving dry cloth with one hand and putting off the wet one. But I found out how one begins in the corner. Later in the morning it had grown hot, as we left pretty Iva, and made our way through broad or narrow roads, to Sapapali. The old difficulty again amused me; we could not walk in proper Samoan order; sometimes one of us, sometimes another was in front, while properly, all of us chiefs should have led, and the attendants followed at respectful distances. So that again Awoki would canter on in front of the chiefs: meanwhile Anai told us things of local information, pointing out where the road narrowed, the place where had stood in older times, a famous tree, a cocoanut. Among its branches the Malietoa, who first became converted later to Christianity, used to conceal himself and lasso or noose such pretty _taupos_ or maidens as passing might strike his fancy. One of these had been the grandmother of the young lady whom we were going to visit. While the party talked the scandal over I remained a while by a deep well near the shore, and watched a handsome Samoan ride his horse barebacked to the water, to the sand and distant trees of a little promontory.

When I hurried forward, the party had gone far ahead, and had arrived before me. I crossed the rocky bed of a dry river, upon whose edge stood houses, and going up the hill before me, came upon a high open space with trees far scattered, and several large black tombs made of stones piled together in regular rectangular form; and in the centre of the green a house high-placed which instinct told me was the guest-house, our destination. Part of the mat curtains were down opposite the central posts: I entered by the open side, and saw Adams and the Consul seated next to a young woman in half European dress (that is to say with a corsage); and on the other side of her Seumanu and Anai. I entered and sat down with some hesitation next to the Consul, and after being presented to her ladyship looked about me. Opposite, the posts of the pretty house all adorned with flowers had each a chief, as a sort of sitting caryatid or buttress. And they were big and splendid; that was the Greek frieze of which I was telling you. Between each massive figure, of Ajax and Nestor and Ulysses and Agamemnon, appeared from time to time some little boy, whose small person made them look more ample, as the boys or angels of Michael Angelo’s Sistine Chapel make sibyls and prophets look more colossal by comparison. Then _kava_ was brought in and made solemnly, when in stepped a woman and sat herself beside the _kava_ attendant who dried the wisp. A moment later, and her presence was explained. She, it appears, had the hereditary right to “divide the _kava_,” and had come to claim it. When the heavy clapping of hands announced that the drink was ready, she called out the name of Aigā, to whom the first bowl was presented as to the greatest personage. Then to one of the guests, then to the next relative of the Malietoa, then to a guest, then to a chief, and so on, contrariwise to what we had seen before, where we as guests were helped first. You see we were at court, in the presence of royalty.

When the ceremonies were over, we chatted with Aigā, who spoke English, and whose amiability pleased me. She was embarrassed and shy, and struggled like some girl, unaccustomed to society, to say some proper things. But the grace of her diffidence was all the greater when one noticed the security of position indicated by her voice when speaking in a low distinct tone to others. At length we rose and adjourned to the neighbouring house, where the feast had been set forth. This we were allowed to dispense with under plea of a late breakfast, but for form’s sake we looked at each separate thing, spread out in a long line of Samoan good fare, on green banana leaves that stretched across the house. Then we _papalagi_, (foreigners), returned to a Western soup kindly prepared by Aigā, and our own bread and tea, and sardines, in which fare Aigā joined, and talked to us and we to her, all stretched at full length upon the mats.

Then our lady disappeared with some little show of embarrassment, and had I known how much it cost her, I should have sympathized with her sooner in the annoyance of her having to prepare her toilette for the great official reception (_talolo_), which was to be the next function of the afternoon--the nearest house was the scene of the dressing of herself and her maidens. Through the dropped mats of the openings, girls and women kept plunging in and out, carrying in dress mats, and beads and garlands of flowers, and entangled, complicated cinctures and belts of fruits and flowers, and woven bark--and bringing out the news of how the dresses looked to the loungers sitting at a distance outside. And once I saw carried in a fierce, cruel headgear that our lady was to wear; the great helmet of blond hair, set with sparkling mirrors and tall filaments, to be bound tight with silvery shells around an aching head.

Then we went out to sit and wait on the other side of our guest-house, in the shade toward the sea, while long shadows covered the great space, and the sun itself became veiled and lit the scene with a tempered light more like that of our northern summer. One might almost have imagined an afternoon in some favoured, more poetic point in our coast at home, say Newport on some exceptional evening. The great _mālie_ spread out further than the reserved ground of any of our residences, and its edge dropped suddenly to the sea before us. Once or twice a thatched house stood on the verge of this rolling green, all carefully smoothed and weeded like a lawn. To the left and right were small groves like the wings of a theatre. Far off to one side curved the bay, with palm trees stepping gradually into the sunlight. The sea was blue and green before us, and faintly shining; far off in the haze of sunlight were Upolu and Apolima--spots of blue. Nothing broke this space to the furthest dim horizon, except where on the edge of the cliffs stood one hut through which shone the colour of the sea and the foliage of the tree overshadowing it.

Then our party came up and sat about us on the slope of the grass about the house, and from the groves about us came the sounds of the drum-beat and the call of war music. From behind the house, in a great circle, ran out in a sort of dance, our hostess in full gala costume: naked to the waist, kilted with costly mats held on by flower girdles--on her head the great military cap. She held a little toy club in her hand; on either side, with heavier strides, two of the giants, her attendant chiefs, dressed and undressed in the same way, repeated her movements. Some thirty paces behind her, two of her maidens followed these leaders, turning round in a great circle of dance, spreading out their arms, and the wide folds of their waist-cloths, and the lines of their garlands were flung out by

their motion. In and out of the little grove danced back and forth a crowd of armed men, who threw up their clubs and caught them again.

Right in the middle of the green before us, threading their path between the princess and her girls, crouching to the ground, crawled or ran, bending low, three men, all blackened, with green cinctures of leaves wound round their heads, and short tails of white bark hanging down out of their girdles. These were the king’s “murderers,” relics of a bygone time when savage chiefs, like European sovereigns, used licensed crime to rid themselves of enemies--or friends--against whom they could not wage open war.

These whom we saw were only on parade. All this served but to recall a former power and its historical descent. But the ancestors of these official murderers of hereditary ancestry had been actively employed. At the whispered word of the chief they tracked the destined victim, risking their lives in the attack, and plunged into him their peculiar weapon, the _foto_, the barb of the Sting Ray, which breaking in the wound and poisonous withal, meant inevitable death.

They were called, as I make out, Aitutagata (Devil people). The display lasted but a short time; hardly more than a few circlings by Aigā and her people, then on a sudden all seemed to come up about us, and the assemblage broke up into groups. Aigā bore with apparent confusion our compliments. She was anxious to get away.

There was something inextricably touching in the case of this bashful young person--indoctrinated with our ideas to some extent--apparently realizing how we looked upon the scene, how different her dress and actions from those of her white friends and sisters, and yet carrying it all out to suit her position of princess and hostess; what was due to us, and to the traditions of her race.

With evening came the need of change, and I wandered down to the unfinished church begun by the Malietoa, of whom I told you. The massive foundations of coral rock, against which the tide was washing, are finished, as well as part of the walls of the church. In front is a little island, planted with trees: to the left, at once rocks and high trees; on the right, the surf broke again in a little cove with houses and palm trees, standing high against the setting sun. Far off the point, the outline of Apolima, more than ever like a submerged volcano cone, and the long white line of the surf; and near me, almost under me, a dark moving space in the water, where the tide washed more uneasily, the submerged tomb of a woman called Siga (white), a former wife of Seumanu. There was something that made one dream, in this grave, now remembered, now forgotten, a reminder that all memory can

be but temporary, and that the real end is where all ends and is forgotten, and where, as the Spaniard says, “Dios empiezo.” I sat and sketched a little, seated on the great foundation. Children and women crowded around, and climbed up the space in front, where the great steps should have been, and filed all around the projecting edge that runs about the church. When I had done I rose, and turning the corner of the narrow ledge, found that I had made a group of frightened prisoners. Then I went to the deep pool near by, where the sea runs into the little fresh water, and was smiled at by the good-natured face, just being washed, of one of the murderers by inheritance, who had figured all blackened that afternoon, with green leaves and a white hanging tail. His wickedness was being washed off with his blacking: or rather, his wickedness was all archæological, kept up as a proof of the former dignity and power of the chief, and of the obedience of his men. For these people seem never to have been grossly wicked or cruel; as I told you, they were not cannibals or whatever they had that way, ages ago, was condemned as bad. They have even been unwilling to exterminate their enemies in their many wars: and when they could put an end to the German, in this last war, they stopped their killing the moment the enemy was beaten, as they imagined. An element of strong good nature seems to persist at the bottom of their character.

That evening we had a _siva_, like other _sivas_, which I am unable to describe, because I was so sleepy that my memory has not held over. I lurked in the dark, behind our hostess, who did not dance. Her missionary training and her position were against it, I suppose, but also, perhaps, she did not dance well, or as well as others. Afterward she lingered with us, in the late evening, as did the _taupo_ who had danced. With them were her two girls, attendants, and one or two of the elder women, along with some of our men who acted as chorus. Then “quelque diable le poussant,” nothing would do for one of our own party but that he should tease and beg for a dance with more undressing. The older women seemed to enjoy the notion, which reminded them, perhaps, of old days when they were able to be naughty, and had performed all sorts of antics late at night, when the elders and the great people were gone to bed. So gradually, from one dance to another, we came to one in which the performers disrobe entirely for a moment, using some words that represent and lay claim to the same beauty which the Venus of Naples, she whom we call Venus Callipyge, attempts to look at, and certainly shows. But it was all innocent and childish--the _taupo_ danced it, and the young girls accompanied her with one older woman--and Aigā laughed and was amused, but hid away behind us, ashamed. Then we made her dance for

a moment the usual dance, I say we, but it was not I--and as she seemed to think that even that was dreadful enough--we parted with some discomfort. I foresaw trouble, but whether our fair friend was not as much annoyed by the relentless compliments paid to the beauty of others, is more than I can make out, being a man.

In the morning we trotted off a few miles, to this present place Sapotulafai, the headquarters of the great orator, and which is the great political centre. We had a great dinner, at which I sat next to the _taupo_ of the adjacent village, a giantess, whose name is not insignificant, though people here are not apparently named, any more than are people anywhere else, by name to suit them. Charlie interpreted her name for me saying, “When you are on top of a cocoanut, and the wind blows hard, and you are afraid of falling off, that is _Lilia_.” You have seen a palm tree in a gale, and you can imagine the picturesqueness of this definition of fear, in the wild swinging of the waves of the branches.

We had a _siva_ in the afternoon, when a young chief danced with the _taupo_ of his village, to whom he is engaged: She gave him some occasional affectionate whacks of reproof at some remarks that distance did not make clear; and we had a great “_talolo_” with the speech of the great _tulafale_ of Samoa, and then a return speech, which was listened to with some curiosity. Some devil inspired me to urge our representative speech-maker to discuss the severe and mistaken view of dancing taken up by the missionaries--I mean the brown clergy. They had done all sorts of good, but they were crowding too much out in their zeal, and the white missionaries were not so excessive--and so forth. And Adams had made a remark that seems to me a deep one. Something more is needed for these people of few occupations. If they are to live to-day they are destined to a putting aside of the excitement of their little wars, and they need some outlet in games that exercise them, and keep up their appreciation of physical life and excellence. Anyhow, these views were launched out at a risk, and in a few days, without a doubt, will have gone all around Samoa.

My own reason was a nearer one. It grieved me to think that Aigā should risk her church position, because she was polite according to Samoan etiquette, and that the other girls, who did the same, to wit, gave us dances, at the request of their fathers and superiors, should be placed between divided duties. This had been an oppression to the mind ever since we came; and perhaps after all, we may have done well.

In the evening, our own _taupo_, Faauli the daughter of the orator, gave us a _siva_; she danced, and danced well, and so did Lilia, the daughter of a great chief, a Catholic, and then we had the other _taupo_, who danced again with the young chief to whom she was engaged. His dance was certainly amusing to the imagination. The chorus was singing about himself, in his honour, and he performed the steps, if I may so express it. He and another with red girdles and black, furry loin-cloths, and red leaves in the hair, and red bead necklaces, danced with the _taupo_ herself, dressed all in red and purple leaves. The dances were a dance of the hammer, and the dance of the cocoanut, and in the glitter of the palm-fire, the ballet of our fairy opera. And satiated with dances I have tried to be quiet and to sketch until now.

Oct. 30th.

We shall leave to-morrow. I feel tired, a little saddened; I suspect that sleeping on the floors at night, in draughts from the back-country, and wandering occasionally, in the midday, among the hot thickets, may have given me some little fever. The German manager of one of the plantations was telling me a little while ago that there was danger in this, though nothing like what he had seen in other countries. On that account, he had lifted the flooring of the houses, built for his men, Solomon or Marshall islanders, whose health was of course of importance to him, during their contract time. After all this care, they will be taken back, perhaps, to the wrong place, and I suppose, eaten by their fellows, if they happen to land on the wrong spot, or at some neighbouring village.

* * * * *

This afternoon we went to Sapapali, to take leave of Aigā who had been so kind to us, and who seemed almost hurt at our not remaining. We found her apparently sad and troubled, and I regretted that we had been accompanied by the other Taupos of our locality. Not that they were not kept in their places by the greater lady, for this rather timid and amiable person knows perfectly well how to speak to people who are socially below her, and nothing has interested me more than her various shades of inflection in addressing others. But something has evidently annoyed her, whether the break with the church on account of the _siva_, or her girls having been indiscreet, or her having made some mistake that I do not exactly understand. She was much teased by one of us about some “tendresse de cœur,” and that may have annoyed her. And the praise given to her little girls, and an attempt to get them away from her control may not have been pleasant. When I had seen the rest of the company pass by my sketching place, and I knew that the visit was over, I went back alone to her house and found her among her girls prostrate and in tears. But she came out to me, so as to be alone, and she spoke as if we should misjudge her from Sunday-school views and not understand that her parade at the head of her warriors, all undressed, was an official duty to us. And then bade me sweetly good-bye--and but a moment ago my curtain mats have been pushed aside by a messenger who has come all this way at night to bring me flowers from her.

So that I am not in cause: I leave it to you to read. I feel almost as if what I were writing to you were indiscreet enough. Remember that there is little privacy here, and that the houses are half open, so that one may almost rush in. In fact, were it not for the complication of human nature, I cannot see how there could be any privacy. There is privacy somehow or other, but not in our way. Outside the house there may be ways of saying things, inside and out there are dictionaries of signs, but they all have the most wonderful way of hearing, and there are always eyes everywhere. I have remarked that since I have cultivated the habit of sitting on the ground, I see more of everything, and I seem to be able to watch more easily. But, as I said, privacy is relative: nothing has struck me as more Samoan than an elopement which I almost witnessed. The young woman ran away with some young man, along the beach, in the presence of hundreds of people who, it is true, were not exactly watching her. She was just as publicly caught and brought back, cuffed sufficiently and scolded by her older sister, and I see her occasionally, in a neighbour’s house, looking not so repentant as on the first afternoon of her punishment. As I said, I am tired and sad--and I wish you good-night across the ocean and land.

At Home in Vaiala, Nov. 4th.

The end of our malaga was not so pleasant. When we left Sapotulafai last week, I was ill and fevered, and suffered quite a little during our long trip of fourteen hours at sea. We had to row it. There was no wind, and our men, never over-energetic, had been up all night in the last enjoyment of social delights. Once indeed, Seu scornfully took an oar, but even with that, twelve good hours’ rowing is not bad work, and we got back in the evening at eight, having left Savaii at six o’clock in the morning. The light and colour were as usual: even with fever I could occasionally see how beautiful all was, but I managed to sleep, and do not remember anything in particular, unless it be the long-continued song of the men rowing----

“Lelei. Apoli-ma!
O-le-e--O-le-e!”

Vaiala in Upolu, Nov. 13th.

Yesterday, on Faatulia’s invitation, we rode over to the Papa-seea, the Sliding Rock: only a little distance, some hour and a half from where we are, so that by eight o’clock or so we were out in the rain, mounted on the horses seared up with difficulty for the early start. Mine was a horse owned by the boy Poki, who is an owner of horses--he has now three, and his food for them is given by the village common. His still more youthful friend, Sopo, hired his horse to Atamo and somebody else fitted out Awoki and Charley who went with us. Samau, the _tulafale_, and another of our crew were to go ahead and carry some European food and our painting and photographing kit. As we passed along the beach, which is, as you know, the street of Apia, we met Meli Hamilton and Faatulia and Fanua, and little Meli Meredith, all mounted. Gathering them together, under rather a gentle rain, we turned toward the woods behind the town and cantered over a dyke, through a mangrove swamp, where formerly must have been some coral inlet; then past some villages, a few huts, and then into the forest. This is no description to you, but perhaps I can interest you by letting you understand that the delicate form of the great novelist, Mr. Stevenson, passes up or down this road, of necessity, on his way to his Spanish Castle in the mountains. So that when he begins to write South Sea stories, and is obliged to use local colour, you shall probably admire some beautiful description of all or part of the road.

In the woods we overtook our men, and dear Fagalo and Sué, whose bare legs were paddling in the rain. A little path led through woods all overgrown, in a narrow zigzag, over fallen trunks and under branches beneath which we bent. The light fell through green high up, upon green all around us; innumerable small trees and bushes, and occasionally great trees whose trunks ended in high buttresses of rooting sharp and thin, as if the trunk had been ravined. These are the trees which in the old story-books of travel were supposed to furnish a ready-made planking. Over all grew lianas and vines whose great long stems hung in the air above us, or low enough to be pushed aside as we rode. Notwithstanding the several varieties of growth--the Samoan wild orange with double leaf and prickly stem, whose fruit was used in old times as a soap to wash with, or the Fuafua, with broad leaves--the effect was not unlike the appearance of our own forests, had it not been for the lianas, and the occasional sheafs of wild banana that swung against our horses’ heads. For an hour we went along in a scattered file, the sunlight occasionally dropping in upon the great stillness around us. Rarely a bird sung. Once we heard the running of a river. Then we came to a stopping place; all got off; the girls

skilfully ungirthing and unsaddling their horses, and tying them up to the branches with long ropes. Over the trees that sloped down below us, we could now see the harbour of Apia, from one end to the other, and we kindled a fire of dead wood, to show the anxious friends at our end of the bay that we had arrived. There are three waterfalls in this little opening to which our narrow path had led us, and it leads no further and nowhere else. Of the three falls, each divided from the others by wide platforms of rock, the upper one is low and does not count. It is the second and the third that are “slipping rocks.” The water rushes over them in one or many falls, according to the season, and in some of the channels the surface has become so slippery with moss that all one has to do is to sit and be whirled into the pool below. We had just begun to look down into the little hollow, edged on one side by a high rock upon which ferns and vines and green bananas find a scanty foothold, when Fagalo, throwing off her upper covering, seated herself on the edge of the current, and in an instant had slipped off. And a laugh from below echoed above as she rose from the pool and swam to the shore. By the time that we had clambered down to meet her, she had come up and rushed down again followed by Sué. The sight was charming: the pretty girls, with arms thrown out and bodies straight for balance, their wet clothes driven tightly to the hips in the rush of the water, had a look of gold against the gray that brought up Clarence King’s phrase about Hawaii and the “old-gold girls that tumbled down waterfalls.” In the plunge and the white foam, the yellow limbs did indeed look like goldfish in a blue-green pool. Further down there is a small rush of water into a little hollow in the rock; the two girls in their play filled it easily, like mermaids in too small a tank. Then we had lunch on banana leaves, to which our wet friends contributed the shrimps that they had caught, accidently as it were, and without thinking, in these moments of “abandon.” We had also a mess of _palolo_ looking like very dark green spinach, darker than the green leaves in which it was wrapped. Adams insisted that this dish tasted quite like “foie gras,” which he also said was quite as nasty a preparation.

To explain what _palolo_ is I should have told you of a little expedition we made one morning last week, just on the return from our malaga. But I was ill and had suffered too much from native food to write any more upon similar subjects. Even all my liking for Meli Hamilton and my admiration for the fullness and redness of her lips, and for the gleam of her teeth, could scarcely reconcile me to the wriggling of the great tree worms through which she crunched so gayly and healthily at our last great Samoan dinner.