Читать книгу Art in Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 118

Joseph Banks (1743–1820), an independently wealthy, Oxford‐educated scientist, was the principal naturalist on the first Cook voyage. Indeed it was he who put together, and paid for, the team of scientists and artists. The scientific enterprise of the Cook voyages was quite distinct from the romantic idealization of the nouvelle Cythère pervading Bougainville’s account. Nonetheless, the educated Banks, in somewhat Bougainvillean fashion, had a penchant – at least early on in his sojourn, before actual names were exchanged − for relating the inhabitants of Tahiti to his classical heroes. Two chiefs were dubbed ‘Lycurgas’ and ‘Hercules’; another was ‘Ajax’, yet another ‘Epicurus’, and Banks fantasized the queen as a potential ‘Dido’ to his own ‘Aeneas’. In his scientific and cultural observations, he was, however, more sober. In the present extract, written in Tahiti in June 1769, he describes two figures, one made in basket work, the other of carved stone. He also describes a temple, or Marae, which he calls a ‘masterpiece of Indian architecture’, making the first of many comparisons to levels of European craft skill. Banks became a central figure of the late eighteenth‐century English Enlightenment and was President of the Royal Society for over 40 years, from 1778 until his death in 1820. A full‐length portrait of him by Benjamin West, wearing a Maori cloak and surrounded by trophies from his voyage to Oceania, is held in the Usher Gallery, Lincoln. This text is taken from Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, edited by Sir Joseph D. Hooker, London: Macmillan and Co., 1896, pp. 101–4.

We saw a singular curiosity: a figure of a man made of basket‐work, roughly but not ill designed. It was seven feet high, and too bulky in proportion to its height; the whole was neatly covered with feathers – white to represent skin, and black to represent hair, and tallow on the head, where were three protuberances which we should have called horns, but the Indians called them tata ete (little men). The image was called by them Manne. They said it was the only one of the kind in Otahite, and readily attempted to explain its use, but their language was totally unintelligible, and seemed to refer to some customs to which we are perfect strangers. Several miles farther on we went ashore again, though we saw nothing remarkable but a burying‐ground, whose pavement was unusually neat. It was ornamented by a pyramid about five feet high, covered entirely with the fruits of Pandanm odorus and Cratœva gynandra. In the middle, near the pyramid, was a small image of stone very roughly worked, the first instance of carving in stone that I have seen among these people. This they seemed to value, as it was protected from the weather by a kind of shed built purposely over it. Near it were three human skulls, laid in order, very white and clean, and quite perfect.

We afterwards took a walk towards a point on which we had from afar observed trees of etoa (Casuarina equisetifolia), from whence we judged that there would be some marai in the neighbourhood; nor were we disappointed, for we had no sooner arrived there than we were struck with the sight of a most enormous pile, certainly the masterpiece of Indian architecture in this island, and so all the inhabitants allowed. Its size and workmanship almost exceed belief. Its form was similar to that of marais in general, resembling the roof of a house, not smooth at the sides, but formed into eleven steps, each of these four feet in height, making in all 44 feet; its length was 267 feet, its breadth 71 feet. Every one of these steps was formed of white coral stones, most of them neatly squared and polished; the rest were round pebbles, but these, from their uniformity of size and roundness, seemed to have been worked. Some of the coral stones were very large, one I measured was 3½ by 2½ feet.

The foundation was of rock stone, likewise squared; the corner‐stone measured 4 feet 7 inches by 2 feet 4 inches. The building made part of one side of a spacious area walled in with stone; the size of this, which seemed to be intended for a square, was 118 by 110 paces, and it was entirely paved with flat paving‐stones. It is almost beyond belief that Indians could raise so large a structure without the assistance of iron tools to shape their stones or mortar to join them; which last appears almost essential, as most of them are round: but it is done, and almost as firmly as an European workman would have done it, though in some things they seem to have failed. The steps for instance, which range along its greatest length, are not straight; they bend downward in the middle, forming a small segment of a circle. Possibly the ground may have sunk a little under the immense weight of such a great pile; such a sinking, if it took place regularly, would have this effect. The labour of the work is prodigious, the quarried stones are but few, but they must have been brought by hand from some distance; at least we saw no signs of a quarry near it, though I looked carefully about me. The coral must have been fished up from under the water, where indeed it is most plentiful, but usually covered with at least three or four feet of water, and generally with much more. The labour of forming the blocks when obtained must also have been at least as great as that employed in getting them. The natives have not shown us any way by which they could square a stone except by means of another, which must be a most tedious process, and liable to many accidents through tools breaking. The stones are also polished as well and as truly as stones of the kind could be by the best workman in Europe; in that particular they excel, owing to the great plenty of a sharp coral sand which is admirably adapted to the purpose, and which is found everywhere upon the sea‐shore in this neighbourhood.

About a hundred yards to the west of this building was another court or paved area, in which were several Ewhattas, a kind of altar raised on wooden pillars about seven feet high; on these they offer meat of all kinds to the gods. We have thus seen large hogs offered; and here were the skulls of above fifty of them, besides those of dogs, which the priest who accompanied us assured us were only a small fraction of what had been here sacrificed.