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CHAPTER X - TYPEE
To the eastward Ua-huka was being blotted out by an evening rain-
squall that was fast overtaking the Snark. But that little craft,
her big spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was making a good
race of it. Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva,
was abeam, and Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its
wide entrance, where Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail
of a Columbia River salmon-boat, was making brave weather of it in
the smashing southeast swell.
"What do you make that out to be?" I asked Hermann, at the wheel.
"A fishing-boat, sir," he answered after careful scrutiny.
Yet on the chart it was plainly marked, "Sail Rock."
But we were more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay,
where our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and
centred on the midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the
dim walls of a valley extending inland. How often we had pored over
the chart and centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley
it opened--the Valley of Typee. "Taipi" the chart spelled it, and
spelled it correctly, but I prefer "Typee," and I shall always spell
it "Typee." When I was a little boy, I read a book spelled in that
manner--Herman Melville's "Typee"; and many long hours I dreamed
over its pages. Nor was it all dreaming. I resolved there and
then, mightily, come what would, that when I had gained strength and
years, I, too, would voyage to Typee. For the wonder of the world
was penetrating to my tiny consciousness--the wonder that was to
lead me to many lands, and that leads and never pails. The years
passed, but Typee was not forgotten. Returned to San Francisco from
a seven months' cruise in the North Pacific, I decided the time had
come. The brig Galilee was sailing for the Marquesas, but her crew
was complete and I, who was an able-seaman before the mast and young
enough to be overweeningly proud of it, was willing to condescend to
ship as cabin-boy in order to make the pilgrimage to Typee. Of
course, the Galilee would have sailed from the Marquesas without me,
for I was bent on finding another Fayaway and another Kory-Kory. I
doubt that the captain read desertion in my eye. Perhaps even the
berth of cabin-boy was already filled. At any rate, I did not get
it.
Then came the rush of years, filled brimming with projects,
achievements, and failures; but Typee was not forgotten, and here I
was now, gazing at its misty outlines till the squall swooped down
and the Snark dashed on into the driving smother. Ahead, we caught
a glimpse and took the compass bearing of Sentinel Rock, wreathed
with pounding surf. Then it, too, was effaced by the rain and
darkness. We steered straight for it, trusting to hear the sound of
breakers in time to sheer clear. We had to steer for it. We had
naught but a compass bearing with which to orientate ourselves, and
if we missed Sentinel Rock, we missed Taiohae Bay, and we would have
to throw the Snark up to the wind and lie off and on the whole
night--no pleasant prospect for voyagers weary from a sixty days'
traverse of the vast Pacific solitude, and land-hungry, and fruit-
hungry, and hungry with an appetite of years for the sweet vale of
Typee.
Abruptly, with a roar of sound, Sentinel Rock loomed through the
rain dead ahead. We altered our course, and, with mainsail and
spinnaker bellying to the squall, drove past. Under the lea of the
rock the wind dropped us, and we rolled in an absolute calm. Then a
puff of air struck us, right in our teeth, out of Taiohae Bay. It
was in spinnaker, up mizzen, all sheets by the wind, and we were
moving slowly ahead, heaving the lead and straining our eyes for the
fixed red light on the ruined fort that would give us our bearings
to anchorage. The air was light and baffling, now east, now west,
now north, now south; while from either hand came the roar of unseen
breakers. From the looming cliffs arose the blatting of wild goats,
and overhead the first stars were peeping mistily through the ragged
train of the passing squall. At the end of two hours, having come a
mile into the bay, we dropped anchor in eleven fathoms. And so we
came to Taiohae.
In the morning we awoke in fairyland. The Snark rested in a placid
harbour that nestled in a vast amphitheatre, the towering, vine-clad
walls of which seemed to rise directly from the water. Far up, to
the east, we glimpsed the thin line of a trail, visible in one
place, where it scoured across the face of the wall.
"The path by which Toby escaped from Typee!" we cried.
We were not long in getting ashore and astride horses, though the
consummation of our pilgrimage had to be deferred for a day. Two
months at sea, bare-footed all the time, without space in which to
exercise one's limbs, is not the best preliminary to leather shoes
and walking. Besides, the land had to cease its nauseous rolling
before we could feel fit for riding goat-like horses over giddy
trails. So we took a short ride to break in, and crawled through
thick jungle to make the acquaintance of a venerable moss-grown
idol, where had foregathered a German trader and a Norwegian captain
to estimate the weight of said idol, and to speculate upon
depreciation in value caused by sawing him in half. They treated
the old fellow sacrilegiously, digging their knives into him to see
how hard he was and how deep his mossy mantle, and commanding him to
rise up and save them trouble by walking down to the ship himself.
In lieu of which, nineteen Kanakas slung him on a frame of timbers
and toted him to the ship, where, battened down under hatches, even
now he is cleaving the South Pacific Hornward and toward Europe--the
ultimate abiding-place for all good heathen idols, save for the few
in America and one in particular who grins beside me as I write, and
who, barring shipwreck, will grin somewhere in my neighbourhood
until I die. And he will win out. He will be grinning when I am
dust.
Also, as a preliminary, we attended a feast, where one Taiara
Tamarii, the son of an Hawaiian sailor who deserted from a
whaleship, commemorated the death of his Marquesan mother by
roasting fourteen whole hogs and inviting in the village. So we
came along, welcomed by a native herald, a young girl, who stood on
a great rock and chanted the information that the banquet was made
perfect by our presence--which information she extended impartially
to every arrival. Scarcely were we seated, however, when she
changed her tune, while the company manifested intense excitement.
Her cries became eager and piercing. From a distance came answering
cries, in men's voices, which blended into a wild, barbaric chant
that sounded incredibly savage, smacking of blood and war. Then,
through vistas of tropical foliage appeared a procession of savages,
naked save for gaudy loin-cloths. They advanced slowly, uttering
deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation. Slung from young
saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects of
considerable weight, hidden from view by wrappings of green leaves.
Nothing but pigs, innocently fat and roasted to a turn, were inside
those wrappings, but the men were carrying them into camp in
imitation of old times when they carried in "long-pig." Now long-
pig is not pig. 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. 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.
Of all inhabitants of the South Seas, the Marquesans were adjudged
the strongest and the most beautiful. Melville said of them: "I
was especially struck by the physical strength and beauty they
displayed . . . In beauty of form they surpassed anything I had ever
seen. Not a single instance of natural deformity was observable in
all the throng attending the revels. Every individual appeared free
from those blemishes which sometimes mar the effect of an otherwise
perfect form. But their physical excellence did not merely consist
in an exemption from these evils; nearly every individual of the
number might have been taken for a sculptor's model." Mendana, the
discoverer of the Marquesas, described the natives as wondrously
beautiful to behold. Figueroa, the chronicler of his voyage, said
of them: "In complexion they were nearly white; of good stature and
finely formed." Captain Cook called the Marquesans the most
splendid islanders in the South Seas. The men were described, as
"in almost every instance of lofty stature, scarcely ever less than
six feet in height."
And now all this strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of
Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures, afflicted by
leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the
population at two thousand, not taking into consideration the small
adjoining valley of Ho-o-u-mi. Life has rotted away in this
wonderful garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and
healthful as any to be found in the world. Not alone were the
Typeans physically magnificent; they were pure. Their air did not
contain the bacilli and germs and microbes of disease that fill our
own air. And when the white men imported in their ships these
various micro-organisms or disease, the Typeans crumpled up and went
down before them.
When one considers the situation, one is almost driven to the
conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and
corruption. Natural selection, however, gives the explanation. We
of the white race are the survivors and the descendants of the
thousands of generations of survivors in the war with the micro-
organisms. Whenever one of us was born with a constitution
peculiarly receptive to these minute enemies, such a one promptly
died. Only those of us survived who could withstand them. We who
are alive are the immune, the fit--the ones best constituted to live
in a world of hostile micro-organisms. The poor Marquesans had
undergone no such selection. They were not immune. And they, who
had made a custom of eating their enemies, were now eaten by enemies
so microscopic as to be invisible, and against whom no war of dart
and javelin was possible. On the other hand, had there been a few
hundred thousand Marquesans to begin with, there might have been
sufficient survivors to lay the foundation for a new race--a
regenerated race, if a plunge into a festering bath of organic
poison can be called regeneration.
We unsaddled our horses for lunch, and after we had fought the
stallions apart--mine with several fresh chunks bitten out of his
back--and after we had vainly fought the sand-flies, we ate bananas
and tinned meats, washed down by generous draughts of cocoanut milk.
There was little to be seen. The jungle had rushed back and
engulfed the puny works of man. Here and there pai-pais were to be
stumbled upon, but there were no inscriptions, no hieroglyphics, no
clues to the past they attested--only dumb stones, builded and
carved by hands that were forgotten dust. Out of the pai-pais grew
great trees, jealous of the wrought work of man, splitting and
scattering the stones back into the primeval chaos.
We gave up the jungle and sought the stream with the idea of evading
the sand-flies. Vain hope! To go in swimming one must take off his
clothes. The sand-flies are aware of the fact, and they lurk by the
river bank in countless myriads. In the native they are called the
nau-nau, which is pronounced "now-now." They are certainly well
named, for they are the insistent present. There is no past nor
future when they fasten upon one's epidermis, and I am willing to
wager that Omer Khayyam could never have written the Rubaiyat in the
valley of Typee--it would have been psychologically impossible. I
made the strategic mistake of undressing on the edge of a steep bank
where I could dive in but could not climb out. When I was ready to
dress, I had a hundred yards' walk on the bank before I could reach
my clothes. At the first step, fully ten thousand nau-naus landed
upon me. At the second step I was walking in a cloud. By the third
step the sun was dimmed in the sky. After that I don't know what
happened. When I arrived at my clothes, I was a maniac. And here
enters my grand tactical error. There is only one rule of conduct
in dealing with nau-naus. Never swat them. Whatever you do, don't
swat them. They are so vicious that in the instant of annihilation
they eject their last atom of poison into your carcass. You must
pluck them delicately, between thumb and forefinger, and persuade
them gently to remove their proboscides from your quivering flesh.
It is like pulling teeth. But the difficulty was that the teeth
sprouted faster than I could pull them, so I swatted, and, so doing,
filled myself full with their poison. This was a week ago. At the
present moment I resemble a sadly neglected smallpox convalescent.
Ho-o-u-mi is a small valley, separated from Typee by a low ridge,
and thither we started when we had knocked our indomitable and
insatiable riding-animals into submission. As it was, Warren's
mount, after a mile run, selected the most dangerous part of the
trail for an exhibition that kept us all on the anxious seat for
fully five minutes. We rode by the mouth of Typee valley and gazed
down upon the beach from which Melville escaped. There was where
the whale-boat lay on its oars close in to the surf; and there was
where Karakoee, the taboo Kanaka, stood in the water and trafficked
for the sailor's life. There, surely, was where Melville gave
Fayaway the parting embrace ere he dashed for the boat. And there
was the point of land from which Mehevi and Mow-mow and their
following swam off to intercept the boat, only to have their wrists
gashed by sheath-knives when they laid hold of the gunwale, though
it was reserved for Mow-mow to receive the boat-hook full in the
throat from Melville's hands.
We rode on to Ho-o-u-mi. So closely was Melville guarded that he
never dreamed of the existence of this valley, though he must
continually have met its inhabitants, for they belonged to Typee.
We rode through the same abandoned pae-paes, but as we neared the
sea we found a profusion of cocoanuts, breadfruit trees and taro
patches, and fully a dozen grass dwellings. In one of these we
arranged to pass the night, and preparations were immediately put on
foot for a feast. A young pig was promptly despatched, and while he
was being roasted among hot stones, and while chickens were stewing
in cocoanut milk, I persuaded one of the cooks to climb an unusually
tall cocoanut palm. The cluster of nuts at the top was fully one
hundred and twenty-five feet from the ground, but that native strode
up to the tree, seized it in both hands, jack-knived at the waist so
that the soles of his feet rested flatly against the trunk, and then
he walked right straight up without stopping. There were no notches
in the tree. He had no ropes to help him. He merely walked up the
tree, one hundred and twenty-five feet in the air, and cast down the
nuts from the summit. Not every man there had the physical stamina
for such a feat, or the lungs, rather, for most of them were
coughing their lives away. Some of the women kept up a ceaseless
moaning and groaning, so badly were their lungs wasted. Very few of
either sex were full-blooded Marquesans. They were mostly half-
breeds and three-quarter-breeds of French, English, Danish, and
Chinese extraction. At the best, these infusions of fresh blood
merely delayed the passing, and the results led one to wonder
whether it was worth while.
The feast was served on a broad pae-pae, the rear portion of which
was occupied by the house in which we were to sleep. The first
course was raw fish and poi-poi, the latter sharp and more acrid of
taste than the poi of Hawaii, which is made from taro. The poi-poi
of the Marquesas is made from breadfruit. The ripe fruit, after the
core is removed, is placed in a calabash and pounded with a stone
pestle into a stiff, sticky paste. In this stage of the process,
wrapped in leaves, it can be buried in the ground, where it will
keep for years. Before it can be eaten, however, further processes
are necessary. A leaf-covered package is placed among hot stones,
like the pig, and thoroughly baked. After that it is mixed with
cold water and thinned out--not thin enough to run, but thin enough
to be eaten by sticking one's first and second fingers into it. On
close acquaintance it proves a pleasant and most healthful food.
And breadfruit, ripe and well boiled or roasted! It is delicious.
Breadfruit and taro are kingly vegetables, the pair of them, though
the former is patently a misnomer and more resembles a sweet potato
than anything else, though it is not mealy like a sweet potato, nor
is it so sweet.
The feast ended, we watched the moon rise over Typee. The air was
like balm, faintly scented with the breath of flowers. It was a
magic night, deathly still, without the slightest breeze to stir the
foliage; and one caught one's breath and felt the pang that is
almost hurt, so exquisite was the beauty of it. Faint and far could
be heard the thin thunder of the surf upon the beach. There were no
beds; and we drowsed and slept wherever we thought the floor
softest. Near by, a woman panted and moaned in her sleep, and all
about us the dying islanders coughed in the night.
Content of CHAPTER X - TYPEE [Jack London's book: The Cruise of the Snark]
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