The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 18

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Robert Louis Stevenson. The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 18

EDITORIAL NOTE

IN THE SOUTH SEAS

PART I. THE MARQUESAS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

CHAPTER I. AN ISLAND LANDFALL

CHAPTER II. MAKING FRIENDS

CHAPTER III. THE MAROON

CHAPTER IV. DEATH

CHAPTER V. DEPOPULATION

CHAPTER VI. CHIEFS AND TAPUS

CHAPTER VII. HATIHEU

CHAPTER VIII. THE PORT OF ENTRY

CHAPTER IX. THE HOUSE OF TEMOANA

CHAPTER X. A PORTRAIT AND A STORY

CHAPTER XI. LONG-PIG – A CANNIBAL HIGH PLACE

CHAPTER XII. THE STORY OF A PLANTATION

CHAPTER XIII. CHARACTERS

CHAPTER XIV. IN A CANNIBAL VALLEY

CHAPTER XV. THE TWO CHIEFS OF ATUONA

PART II. THE PAUMOTUS

CHAPTER I. THE DANGEROUS ARCHIPELAGO – ATOLLS AT A DISTANCE

CHAPTER II. FAKARAVA: AN ATOLL AT HAND

CHAPTER III. A HOUSE TO LET IN A LOW ISLAND

CHAPTER IV. TRAITS AND SECTS IN THE PAUMOTUS

CHAPTER V. A PAUMOTUAN FUNERAL

CHAPTER VI. GRAVEYARD STORIES

PART III. THE EIGHT ISLANDS

CHAPTER I. THE KONA COAST

CHAPTER II. A RIDE IN THE FOREST

CHAPTER III. THE CITY OF REFUGE

CHAPTER IV. KAAHUMANU

CHAPTER V. THE LEPERS OF KONA

PART IV. THE GILBERTS

CHAPTER I. BUTARITARI

CHAPTER II. THE FOUR BROTHERS

CHAPTER III. AROUND OUR HOUSE

CHAPTER IV. A TALE OF A TAPU

CHAPTER V. A TALE OF A TAPU —continued

CHAPTER VI. THE FIVE DAYS’ FESTIVAL

CHAPTER VII. HUSBAND AND WIFE

PART V. THE GILBERTS – APEMAMA

CHAPTER I. THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE ROYAL TRADER

CHAPTER II. THE KING OF APEMAMA: FOUNDATION OF EQUATOR TOWN

CHAPTER III. THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE PALACE OF MANY WOMEN

CHAPTER IV. THE KING OF APEMAMA: EQUATOR TOWN AND THE PALACE

CHAPTER V. KING AND COMMONS

CHAPTER VI. THE KING OF APEMAMA: DEVIL-WORK

CHAPTER VII. THE KING OF APEMAMA

LETTERS FROM SAMOA

LETTERS TO THE “TIMES,” “PALL MALL GAZETTE,” ETC

LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE

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For nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for some while before I set forth upon my voyage, I believed I was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and undertaker to expect. It was suggested that I should try the South Seas; and I was not unwilling to visit like a ghost, and be carried like a bale, among scenes that had attracted me in youth and health. I chartered accordingly Dr. Merrit’s schooner yacht, the Casco, seventy-four tons register; sailed from San Francisco towards the end of June 1888, visited the eastern islands, and was left early the next year at Honolulu. Hence, lacking courage to return to my old life of the house and sick-room, I set forth to leeward in a trading schooner, the Equator, of a little over seventy tons, spent four months among the atolls (low coral islands) of the Gilbert group, and reached Samoa towards the close of ’89. By that time gratitude and habit were beginning to attach me to the islands; I had gained a competency of strength; I had made friends; I had learned new interests; the time of my voyages had passed like days in fairyland; and I decided to remain. I began to prepare these pages at sea, on a third cruise, in the trading steamer Janet Nicoll. If more days are granted me, they shall be passed where I have found life most pleasant and man most interesting; the axes of my black boys are already clearing the foundations of my future house; and I must learn to address readers from the uttermost parts of the sea.

That I should thus have reversed the verdict of Lord Tennyson’s hero is less eccentric than appears. Few men who come to the islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm shades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhaps cherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet more rarely repeated. No part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor, and the task before me is to communicate to fireside travellers some sense of its seduction, and to describe the life, at sea and ashore, of many hundred thousand persons, some of our own blood and language, all our contemporaries, and yet as remote in thought and habit as Rob Roy or Barbarossa, the Apostles or the Cæsars.

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The sanction of the tapu is superstitious; and the punishment of infraction either a wasting or a deadly sickness. A slow disease follows on the eating of tapu fish, and can only be cured with the bones of the same fish burned with the due mysteries. The cocoa-nut and breadfruit tapu works more swiftly. Suppose you have eaten tapu fruit at the evening meal, at night your sleep will be uneasy; in the morning, swelling and a dark discoloration will have attacked your neck, whence they spread upward to the face; and in two days, unless the cure be interjected, you must die. This cure is prepared from the rubbed leaves of the tree from which the patient stole; so that he cannot be saved without confessing to the Tahuku the person whom he wronged. In the experience of my informant, almost no tapu had been put in use, except the two described: he had thus no opportunity to learn the nature and operation of the others; and, as the art of making them was jealously guarded amongst the old men, he believed the mystery would soon die out. I should add that he was no Marquesan, but a Chinaman, a resident in the group from boyhood, and a reverent believer in the spells which he described. White men, amongst whom Ah Fu included himself, were exempt; but he had a tale of a Tahitian woman, who had come to the Marquesas, eaten tapu fish, and, although uninformed of her offence and danger, had been afflicted and cured exactly like a native.

Doubtless the belief is strong; doubtless, with this weakly and fanciful race, it is in many cases strong enough to kill; it should be strong indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded. “Had you hidden a tapu?” we may conceive him asking: and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and that is perhaps the strangest feature of the system – that it should be regarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe, and, when examined from within, should present so many apparent evidences of design.

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