Tales Of the Angler's El Dorado Nz Read online

  I spent a full day in this world-famed South Sea Island port, the French Papeete. It was long enough for me! Despite all I had read I had arrived there free of impressions, with eager receptive mind. I did not wonder that Robert Louis Stevenson went to the South Seas a romancer and became a militant moralist. It was not fair, however, to judge other places through contact with Papeete.

  The French have long been noted for the careless and slovenly way in which they govern provinces. Papeete is a good example. There is no restriction against the Chinese, who appeared to predominate in business. Papeete is also the eddying point for all the riffraff of the South Seas. The beach comber, always a romantic if pathetic figure in my memory, through the South Sea stories I have read, became by actual contact somewhat disconcerting to me, and wholly disgusting. Perhaps I did not see any of the noble ruins.

  Every store I entered in Papeete was run by a crafty-eyed little Chinaman. I heard that the Chinese merchants had all the money. It was no wonder. I saw very few French people. I met one kindly-looking priest. All the whites who fell under my gaze seemed to me to be sadly out of place there. They were thin, in most cases pale and unhealthy-looking. It was plain to me that the Creator did not intend white men to live on South Sea Islands. If he had he would have made the pigment of their skins capable of resisting the sun.

  This was the early summer for Tahiti. It was hot. New York at 99 degrees in the shade, or Needles, California, at 115 degrees, would give some idea of heat at Papeete. It was a moist, sticky, oppressive, enervating heat that soon prostrated. I always could stand hot weather, and I managed to get around under this. But many of the ship passengers suffered, and by five o'clock that evening were absolutely exhausted.

  What amazed me was the fact that this heat did not prevent the drinking of liquor. Champagne and other beverages were exceedingly cheap at Papeete. I found out long ago that a great many people who think they travel to see and learn really travel to eat and drink, and the close of this day on shore at Papeete provided a melancholy example of the fact. If I saw one bottle of liquor come aboard the S. S. Makura I saw a hundred. Besides such openly avowed bottles, there were cases and cases packed up in the companionway for delivery.

  Captain Mitchell, Mr. Radmore and I visited the hotel or resort made famous mostly through Mr. O'Briens book, White Shadows of the South Seas. Luxurious growths of green and wonderfully fragrant flowers surrounded this little low house of many verandas; but that was about all I could see attractive there. It appeared different classes of drinkers had different rooms in which to imbibe. Of those I passed, some approached what in America we would call a dive. It is all in the way people look at a thing. The licentiousness of women and the availability of wine rank high in the properties of renown.

  The Tahitian women presented an agreeable surprise to me. From all the exotic photographs I had seen I had not been favorably impressed. But photographs do not do justice to Tahitian women. I saw hundreds of them, and except in a few cases, noticeably the dancers, who in fact were faked to impress the tourists, they were modestly dressed and graceful in appearance. They were strong, well built though not voluptuous, rather light-skinned and not at all suggesting negroid blood. They presented a new race to me. They had large melting melancholy eyes. They wore their hair in braids down their backs, like American schoolgirls of long ago when something of America still survived in our girls. These Tahitians had light-brown, sometimes nut-brown and chestnut hair, rich and thick and beautiful. What a delight to see! What pleasure to walk behind one of these barefooted and free-stepping maidens just for the innocent happiness of gazing at her wonderful braid! No scrawny shaved bristled necks, such as the flappers exhibit now, to man's bewildered disgust; no erotic and abnormal signs of wanting to resemble a male! Goodness only knows why so-called civilized white women of modern times want to look like men, but so it seems they do. If they could see the backs of the heads of these Tahitian girls and their long graceful braids of hair, that even a fool of a man could tell made very little trouble, and was so exquisitely feminine and beautiful, they might have a moment of illumined mind.

  The scene at the dock as the S. S. Makura swung off was one I shall not soon forget. Much of Papeete was there, except, most significantly, the Chinese. No doubt they were busily counting the enormous number of French francs they had amassed during the day. The watchers in the background were quiet and orderly, and among these were French ladies who were bidding friends farewell, and other white people whose presence made me divine they were there merely to watch a ship depart for far shores. A ship they longed to be aboard. I could read it in their eyes.

  In the foreground, however, were many Tahitian women and some half caste, with the loud-mouthed roustabouts who were raving at the drunken louts on board the ship. It was not a pretty sight. Near me on the rail sat an inebriated youth, decorated with flowers, waving a champagne bottle at those below. I did not see any friendliness in the uplifted dark eyes. This was only another ship going on down to the sea; and I thought most of those on hoard were held in contempt by those on land.

  I did not leave Papeete, however, without most agreeable and beautiful impressions. Outside of the town there were the simplicity and beauty of the native habitations and the sweetness of the naked little Tahitians disporting on the beach. There were the magnificence of the verdure, foliage and flowers and the heavy atmosphere languorous with fragrance. There were the splendour of the surf breaking on the reef seen through the stately cocoanut palms, the burn of the sun and the delicious cool of the shade. There were the utter and ever-growing strangeness of the island and the unknown perceptions that were gradually building up an impression of the vastness of the South Sea. There were the splendor of Nature in her most lavish moods and the unsolvable mystery of human life.

  I saw many old Tahitian men who I imagined had eaten human flesh, "long pig", as they called it in their day. The record seemed written in their great strange eyes.

  Birds and fish were almost negligible at Tahiti. For all the gazing that I put in I saw only a few small needle fish. Not a shark, not a line, Wit a break or swirl on the surface! There were no gulls, no sea birds of any kind, and I missed them very much. I saw several small birds about the size of robins, rather drab-colored with white on their wings, black heads and yellow beaks. They were tame and had a musical note.

  On the next day out from Papeete we saw steamship smoke on the horizon. It grew into the funnel of a ship, then the hull, and at last the bulk of the sister ship of the Makura, the Tahiti. She passed us perhaps five miles away, a noble sight, and especially fascinating because she was the only traveling craft on our horizon throughout the voyage.

  A little after daybreak on the following morning I was awakened by the steward, who said Rarotonga was in sight. From a distance this island appeared to be a cone-shaped green mass rising to several high sharp-toothed peaks. Near at hand, in the glory of the sunrise, it looked like a beautiful mountain, verdant and colorful, rising out of a violet sea. I noted the extremely sharp serrated ridges rising to the peaks, all thickly covered with tropic verdure. The island appeared to be surrounded by a barrier reef, against which the heaving sea burst into white breakers.

  Schools of flying fish, darting like swarms of silver bees, flew from before our bows. That was a promising sight, for usually where there are schools of small fish the great game fish will be found. Here, as at Tahiti, there was a marked absence of birds.

  After Papeete, the weather was delightfully cool. The Makura anchored outside the reef, half a mile from shore, and small launches with canoe-shaped lighters carried cargo and passengers through a narrow gate in the reef to the docks.

  Rarotonga was under English control, and certainly presented an inspiring contrast to the decadent and vitiated Papeete. At once we were struck with the cleanliness of streets and wharfs, and the happy, care-free demeanor of the natives. They looked prosperous, and we were to learn that they all owned their bit of cocoanut grove and w
ere independent. We drove around the island, a matter of twenty miles more or less. The road was level and shady all the way, with the violet white-wreathed sea showing through the cocoanut trees on one side and the wonderful sharp peaks rising above the forest on the other.

  There were places as near paradise as it has been my good fortune to see. Flowers were as abundant as in a conservatory, with red and white blossoms prevailing. Children ran from every quarter to meet us, decorated with wreaths and crowns of flowers, and waving great bunches of the glorious bloom. They were bright-eyed merry children, sincere in their welcome to the visitors. Some of the native houses were set in open glades, where wide-spreading, fern-leaved trees blazing with crimson blossoms were grouped about the green shady lawns. The glamour of the beautiful colors was irresistible. The rich thick amber light of June in some parts of the United States had always seemed to me to be unsurpassable; but compared with the gold-white and rose-pink lights of Rarotonga it grew pale and dull in memory. The air was warm, fragrant, languorous. It seemed to come from eternal summer. Everywhere sounded the wash of the surf of the reef. You could never forget the haunting presence of the ocean.

  After our trip round the island we spent a couple of hours on the beach with the natives. This was in the center of the town. A continual stream of natives strolled and rode by. Their colored garments added to the picturesque attraction of the place. On the reef just outside could be seen the bones of a schooner sticking from the surface; and farther out the ironwork of a huge ship that had been wrecked there years ago. They seemed grim reminders of the remorselessness of the azure sea. The atmosphere of the hour was one of sylvan summer, the gentle and pleasant warmth of the South Seas, the idle, happy tranquillity of a place favored by the gods; but only a step out showed the naked white teeth of the coral reef, and beyond that the inscrutable and changeful sea.

  We bought from the natives until our limited stock of English money ran out. Then we were at the pains of seeing the very best of the pearls, baskets, bead necklaces and hatbands, fans and feathers, exhibited for our edification. These natives found their tongues after a while and talked in English very well indeed. What a happy contrast from the melancholy shadow-faced Tahitians!

  It was interesting to learn that liquor is prohibited at Rarotonga. If any evidence were needed in favor of prohibition, here it was in the beautiful healthy wholesome life on Rarotonga. Indeed, everyone appeared charmed with the beauty, color, simplicity and happiness of this island. "By Jove! Rarotonga is just what I wanted a South Sea Island to be!" was the felicitous way Mr. Radmore put it. Absolutely this charm would grow on one. It might not do to spend a long time at Rarotonga. But I decided that some day I would risk coming for a month or two. We learned that at certain seasons fish were plentiful, especially the giant swordfish. Among he other islands of the Cook group was one over a hundred miles from Rarotonga, rarely visited by whites, and said to be exquisitely beautiful and wonderful.

  One of the passengers who boarded the Makura at Rarotonga was was Dr. Lambert, head of the Rockefeller Foundation in the South seas. He was an exceedingly interesting man to meet. He had been eight years in the islands, and knew the native life as well as anyone living. He called Papeete an uncovered brothel; and indeed had no good word for any of the French islands. It was of no use, he claimed, to try to interest the French in improvements; and therefore he had not been able to let the Tahitians and Marquesans benefit by the splendid work being done by the foundation.

  Dr. Lambert clarified many obscure points in my mind. He was a keen close student, and he had been everywhere. Those writers who had recorded the havoc done by syphilis had simply been wrong. There is little or no syphilis in the South Seas. The disease, haws by name, has been mistaken for syphilis, but it is not a venereal disease.

  Drink introduced by the traders has always been the curse. In those islands like Rarotonga where the sale and trading of drink have been prohibited the natives have recovered their former happy and prosperous estate. Immorality among the young people remains about the same as it always has been, but the natives do not regard such relation as anything to be ashamed of. It is simple, natural, and has ever been so. The married woman, however, is usually virtuous.

  On Tuesday, January thirteenth, we crossed the 180th meridian, and somewhere along there we were to drop a day, lose it entirely out of the week! I imagine that day should have been Tuesday, but the steamship company, no doubt for reasons of its own, made Saturday the day. How queer to go to bed Friday night and wake up Sunday morning! Where would the Saturday have flown? I resolved to put it down to the mysteries of latitude and longitude.

  There was another thing quite as strange, yet wholly visible, and that was the retreat of the sun toward the north; imperceptibly at first, but surely. I saw the sun rise north of east and set north of west. As the Makura rushed tirelessly on her way, this northward trend of the sun became more noticeable. It quite changed my world; turned me upside down. How infinitely vast and appalling seem the earth and the sea! Yet they are but dots in the universe. Verily a traveler sees much to make him think.

  Chapter III

  DESTINATION: BAY OF ISLANDS--THE ANGLER'S EL DORADO

  There were two pearl traders on the Makura who had boarded the ship at Rarotonga. One of them, Drury Low, had not been off his particular island for fifteen years. He was a strange low-voiced new type of man to me. I think he was Scotch. He lived at Aitutaki Island, one of the Cook group, said to be the loveliest island in the South Seas. His companion's name was McCloud. They gave me information concerning a great game fish around Aitutaki Island. They excited my curiosity to such extent that I got out photographs of yellow-fin tuna, broadbill swordfish, Marlin swordfish, and sailfish. To my amazement these men identified each, and assured me positively that these species were common in the Cook Islands. They also described to me what must be a sawfish, native to these waters. The yellow-fin tuna was called varu in the Cook Islands, walu in the Fijis, and grew to large size. Low saw one caught recently weighing one hundred and six pounds, and knew of others over a hundred. These were caught on hand-lines, trolling outside the reef. Recently a large one was hooked, and bitten in two by a shark. The smaller part that was hauled in weighed over two hundred.

  The traders told of a Marlin being caught on a hand-line. It was a leaping fish, and over nine feet in length. McCloud then told of the capture of a sixteen-foot sail-fish, on a heavy hand-line. It took half a day to subdue this fish. A sixteen-foot sailfish, if at all heavy-bodied, would weigh at least five hundred, most likely more. I saw a picture of a fish that closely resembled the wahoo. They called it a kingfish.

  To establish the fact of these great game fish in the South Seas was something of paramount importance to me, and the cause of much speculation. What might it not lead to? How incalculably are our lives influenced by apparently little things!

  Never shall I forget my first absolutely certain sight of an albatross. it was on the afternoon of January fifteenth about two o'clock. I heard some one speaking of a wonderful bird following the ship, so I at once ran out. Wonderful bird? How futile are words! When I saw this sea bird of Ancient Mariner fame I just gasped, "Oh! Grand!" But then I have an unusual love for birds.

  The albatross had a white body and brown wings that spread ten feet from tip to tip. They were a lighter color underneath. The breast, back and head were pure white; the body appeared to be as large as that of a goose; the head had something of an eagle shape, seen at such a distance. From head to tail there was a slight bow, sometimes seen in sea gulls. But it was the wing spread, the vast bow-shaped, marvelous wings that so fascinated me. I had watched condors, eagles, vultures, falcons, hawks, kites, frigate birds, terns, boobies, all the great performers of the air, but I doubted that I had ever seen the equal of the albatross. What sailing! What a swoop! What splendid poise and ease, and then incredible speed! The albatross would drop back a mile from the ship, and then all in a moment, it seemed, he had caught up aga
in. I watched him through my glass. I devoured him. I yearned to see him close. How free, how glorious! I wondered if that bird had a soul such as Coleridge would endow him with. If dogs were almost human in their understanding of men, why could not wild birds have something as unusual? The albatross had always haunted me, inspired me, filled me with awe, reverence.

  Late in the afternoon I espied another albatross, or at least one that on nearer view looked different. I climbed to the top deck and went aft to the stern rail, where I had an hour of delight in watching him from an unobstructed vantage point. The markings differed enough to convince me it might be another albatross. The body was flecked with brown, the neck ringed with the same color; the head like that of a frigate bird, only very much larger; the bill yellow, long and hooked. There was a dark marking on the white tail; the backs of the wings were dark brown, almost black, and the under side cream white except for black tips. He surely was a beautiful and majestic bird, lord of the sea. Where he swooped down from a height, he turned on his side so that one wing tip skimmed the waves and the other stood straight up. He sailed perpendicularly. He was ponderous, graceful, swift. A few motions of the wide wings sent him sailing, careening, swooping. He appeared tireless, as if the air was his native element, as no doubt it is, more than the sea. Once he alighted like a feather, keeping his large wings up, as if not to wet them. When he launched himself again it was to run on the water, like a shearwater, until he had acquired momentum enough to keep him up. Then he lifted himself clear.

  Sunday morning at ten, January seventeenth, I sighted land. New Zealand! High pale cliffs rising to dark mountain ranges in the background swept along the western horizon as far as I could see.