BY a little before noon we were running down the coast of our destination,
Fakarava: the air very light, the sea near smooth; though still we were
accompanied by a continuous murmur from the beach, like the sound of a distant
train. The isle is of a huge longitude, the enclosed lagoon thirty miles by ten
or twelve, and the coral tow-path, which they call the land, some eighty or
ninety miles by (possibly) one furlong. That part by which we sailed was all
raised; the underwood excellently green, the topping wood of coco-palms
continuous - a mark, if I had known it, of man's intervention. For once more,
and once more unconsciously, we were within hail of fellow-creatures, and that
vacant beach was but a pistol-shot from the capital city of the archipelago. But
the life of an atoll, unless it be enclosed, passes wholly on the shores of the
lagoon; it is there the villages are seated, there the canoes ply and are drawn
up; and the beach of the ocean is a place accursed and deserted, the fit scene
only for wizardry and shipwreck, and in the native belief a haunting ground of
murderous spectres.
By and by we might perceive a breach in the low barrier; the woods ceased; a
glittering point ran into the sea, tipped with an emerald shoal the mark of
entrance. As we drew near we met a little run of sea - the private sea of the
lagoon having there its origin and end, and here, in the jaws of the gateway,
trying vain conclusions with the more majestic heave of the Pacific. The CASCO
scarce avowed a shock; but there are times and circumstances when these harbour
mouths of inland basins vomit floods, deflecting, burying, and dismasting ships.
For, conceive a lagoon perfectly sealed but in the one point, and that of merely
navigable width; conceive the tide and wind to have heaped for hours together in
that coral fold a superfluity of waters, and the tide to change and the wind
fall - the open sluice of some great reservoirs at home will give an image of
the unstemmable effluxion.
We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were craned over the
rail. For the water, shoaling under our board, became changed in a moment to
surprising hues of blue and grey; and in its transparency the coral branched and
blossomed, and the fish of the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and
striped, and even beaked like parrots. I have paid in my time to view many
curiosities; never one so curious as that first sight over the ship's rail in
the lagoon of Fakarava. But let not the reader be deceived with hope. I have
since entered, I suppose, some dozen atolls in different parts of the Pacific,
and the experience has never been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency
of submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, have not enraptured me
again.
Before we could raise our eyes from that engaging spectacle the schooner had
slipped betwixt the pierheads of the reef, and was already quite committed to
the sea within. The containing shores are so little erected, and the lagoon
itself is so great, that, for the more part, it seemed to extend without a check
to the horizon. Here and there, indeed, where the reef carried an inlet, like a
signet-ring upon a finger, there would be a pencilling of palms; here and there,
the green wall of wood ran solid for a length of miles; and on the port hand,
under the highest grove of trees, a few houses sparkled white - Rotoava, the
metropolitan settlement of the Paumotus. Hither we beat in three tacks, and came
to an anchor close in shore, in the first smooth water since we had left San
Francisco, five fathoms deep, where a man might look overboard all day at the
vanishing cable, the coral patches, and the many- coloured fish.
Fakarava was chosen to be the seat of Government from nautical considerations
only. It is eccentrically situate; the productions, even for a low island, poor;
the population neither many nor - for Low Islanders - industrious. But the
lagoon has two good passages, one to leeward, one to windward, so that in all
states of the wind it can be left and entered, and this advantage, for a
government of scattered islands, was decisive. A pier of coral, landing-stairs,
a harbour light upon a staff and pillar, and two spacious Government bungalows
in a handsome fence, give to the northern end of Rotoava a great air of
consequence. This is confirmed on the one hand by an empty prison, on the other
by a gendarmerie pasted over with hand-bills in Tahitian, land-law notices from
Papeete, and republican sentiments from Paris, signed (a little after date)
'Jules Grevy, PERIHIDENTE.' Quite at the far end a belfried Catholic chapel
concludes the town; and between, on a smooth floor of white coral sand and under
the breezy canopy of coco-palms, the houses of the natives stand irregularly
scattered, now close on the lagoon for the sake of the breeze, now back under
the palms for love of shadow.
Not a soul was to be seen. But for the thunder of the surf on the far side,
it seemed you might have heard a pin drop anywhere about that capital city.
There was something thrilling in the unexpected silence, something yet more so
in the unexpected sound. Here before us a sea reached to the horizon, rippling
like an inland mere; and behold! close at our back another sea assaulted with
assiduous fury the reverse of the position. At night the lantern was run up and
lit a vacant pier. In one house lights were seen and voices heard, where the
population (I was told) sat playing cards. A little beyond, from deep in the
darkness of the palm- grove, we saw the glow and smelt the aromatic odour of a
coal of cocoa-nut husk, a relic of the evening kitchen. Crickets sang; some
shrill thing whistled in a tuft of weeds; and the mosquito hummed and stung.
There was no other trace that night of man, bird, or insect in the isle. The
moon, now three days old, and as yet but a silver crescent on a still visible
sphere, shone through the palm canopy with vigorous and scattered lights. The
alleys where we walked were smoothed and weeded like a boulevard; here and there
were plants set out; here and there dusky cottages clustered in the shadow, some
with verandahs. A public garden by night, a rich and fashionable watering-place
in a by-season, offer sights and vistas not dissimilar. And still, on the one
side, stretched the lapping mere, and from the other the deep sea still growled
in the night. But it was most of all on board, in the dead hours, when I had
been better sleeping, that the spell of Fakarava seized and held me. The moon
was down. The harbour lantern and two of the greater planets drew vari-coloured
wakes on the lagoon. From shore the cheerful watch-cry of cocks rang out at
intervals above the organ-point of surf. And the thought of this depopulated
capital, this protracted thread of annular island with its crest of coco-palms
and fringe of breakers, and that tranquil inland sea that stretched before me
till it touched the stars, ran in my head for hours with delight.
So long as I stayed upon that isle these thoughts were constant. I lay down
to sleep, and woke again with an unblunted sense of my surroundings. I was never
weary of calling up the image of that narrow causeway, on which I had my
dwelling, lying coiled like a serpent, tail to mouth, in the outrageous ocean,
and I was never weary of passing - a mere quarter-deck parade - from the one
side to the other, from the shady, habitable shores of the lagoon to the
blinding desert and uproarious breakers of the opposite beach. The sense of
insecurity in such a thread of residence is more than fanciful. Hurricanes and
tidal waves over-leap these humble obstacles; Oceanus remembers his strength,
and, where houses stood and palms flourished, shakes his white beard again over
the barren coral. Fakarava itself has suffered; the trees immediately beyond my
house were all of recent replantation; and Anaa is only now recovered from a
heavier stroke. I knew one who was then dwelling in the isle. He told me that he
and two ship captains walked to the sea beach. There for a while they viewed the
on-coming breakers, till one of the captains clapped suddenly his hand before
his eyes and cried aloud that he could endure no longer to behold them. This was
in the afternoon; in the dark hours of the night the sea burst upon the island
like a flood; the settlement was razed all but the church and presbytery; and,
when day returned, the survivors saw themselves clinging in an abattis of
uprooted coco-palms and ruined houses.
Danger is but a small consideration. But men are more nicely sensible of a
discomfort; and the atoll is a discomfortable home. There are some, and these
probably ancient, where a deep soil has formed and the most valuable fruit-trees
prosper. I have walked in one, with equal admiration and surprise, through a
forest of huge breadfruits, eating bananas and stumbling among taro as I went.
This was in the atoll of Namorik in the Marshall group, and stands alone in my
experience. To give the opposite extreme, which is yet far more near the
average, I will describe the soil and productions of Fakarava. The surface of
that narrow strip is for the more part of broken coral lime-stone, like volcanic
clinkers, and excruciating to the naked foot; in some atolls, I believe, not in
Fakarava, it gives a fine metallic ring when struck. Here and there you come
upon a bank of sand, exceeding fine and white, and these parts are the least
productive. The plants (such as they are) spring from and love the broken coral,
whence they grow with that wonderful verdancy that makes the beauty of the atoll
from the sea. The coco-palm in particular luxuriates in that stern SOLUM,
striking down his roots to the brackish, percolated water, and bearing his green
head in the wind with every evidence of health and pleasure. And yet even the
coco-palm must be helped in infancy with some extraneous nutriment, and through
much of the low archipelago there is planted with each nut a piece of ship's
biscuit and a rusty nail. The pandanus comes next in importance, being also a
food tree; and he, too, does bravely. A green bush called MIKI runs everywhere;
occasionally a purao is seen; and there are several useless weeds. According to
M. Cuzent, the whole number of plants on an atoll such as Fakarava will scarce
exceed, even if it reaches to, one score. Not a blade of grass appears; not a
grain of humus, save when a sack or two has been imported to make the semblance
of a garden; such gardens as bloom in cities on the window-sill. Insect life is
sometimes dense; a cloud o' mosquitoes, and, what is far worse, a plague of
flies blackening our food, has sometimes driven us from a meal on Apemama; and
even in Fakarava the mosquitoes were a pest. The land crab may be seen scuttling
to his hole, and at night the rats besiege the houses and the artificial
gardens. The crab is good eating; possibly so is the rat; I have not tried.
Pandanus fruit is made, in the Gilberts, into an agreeable sweetmeat, such as a
man may trifle with at the end of a long dinner; for a substantial meal I have
no use for it. The rest of the food-supply, in a destitute atoll such as
Fakarava, can be summed up in the favourite jest of the archipelago - cocoa-nut
beefsteak. Cocoa-nut green, cocoa-nut ripe, cocoa-nut germinated; cocoa-nut to
eat and cocoa-nut to drink; cocoa-nut raw and cooked, cocoa-nut hot and cold -
such is the bill of fare. And some of the entrees are no doubt delicious. The
germinated nut, cooked in the shell and eaten with a spoon, forms a good
pudding; cocoa-nut milk - the expressed juice of a ripe nut, not the water of a
green one - goes well in coffee, and is a valuable adjunct in cookery through
the South Seas; and cocoa- nut salad, if you be a millionaire, and can afford to
eat the value of a field of corn for your dessert, is a dish to be remembered
with affection. But when all is done there is a sameness, and the Israelites of
the low islands murmur at their manna.
The reader may think I have forgot the sea. The two beaches do certainly
abound in life, and they are strangely different. In the lagoon the water
shallows slowly on a bottom of the fine slimy sand, dotted with clumps of
growing coral. Then comes a strip of tidal beach on which the ripples lap. In
the coral clumps the great holy-water clam (TRIDACNA) grows plentifully; a
little deeper lie the beds of the pearl-oyster and sail the resplendent fish
that charmed us at our entrance; and these are all more or less vigorously
coloured. But the other shells are white like lime, or faintly tinted with a
little pink, the palest possible display; many of them dead besides, and badly
rolled. On the ocean side, on the mounds of the steep beach, over all the width
of the reef right out to where the surf is bursting, in every cranny, under
every scattered fragment of the coral, an incredible plenty of marine life
displays the most wonderful variety and brilliancy of hues. The reef itself has
no passage of colour but is imitated by some shell. Purple and red and white,
and green and yellow, pied and striped and clouded, the living shells wear in
every combination the livery of the dead reef - if the reef be dead - so that
the eye is continually baffled and the collector continually deceived. I have
taken shells for stones and stones for shells, the one as often as the other. A
prevailing character of the coral is to be dotted with small spots of red, and
it is wonderful how many varieties of shell have adopted the same fashion and
donned the disguise of the red spot. A shell I had found in plenty in the
Marquesas I found here also unchanged in all things else, but there were the red
spots. A lively little crab wore the same markings. The case of the hermit or
soldier crab was more conclusive, being the result of conscious choice. This
nasty little wrecker, scavenger, and squatter has learned the value of a spotted
house; so it be of the right colour he will choose the smallest shard, tuck
himself in a mere corner of a broken whorl, and go about the world half naked;
but I never found him in this imperfect armour unless it was marked with the red
spot.
Some two hundred yards distant is the beach of the lagoon. Collect the shells
from each, set them side by side, and you would suppose they came from different
hemispheres; the one so pale, the other so brilliant; the one prevalently white,
the other of a score of hues, and infected with the scarlet spot like a disease.
This seems the more strange, since the hermit crabs pass and repass the island,
and I have met them by the Residency well, which is about central, journeying
either way. Without doubt many of the shells in the lagoon are dead. But why are
they dead? Without doubt the living shells have a very different background set
for imitation. But why are these so different? We are only on the threshold of
the mysteries.
Either beach, I have said, abounds with life. On the sea-side and in certain
atolls this profusion of vitality is even shocking: the rock under foot is mined
with it. I have broken off - notably in Funafuti and Arorai - great lumps of
ancient weathered rock that rang under my blows like iron, and the fracture has
been full of pendent worms as long as my hand, as thick as a child's finger, of
a slightly pinkish white, and set as close as three or even four to the square
inch. Even in the lagoon, where certain shell-fish seem to sicken, others (it is
notorious) prosper exceedingly and make the riches of these islands. Fish, too,
abound; the lagoon is a closed fish-pond, such as might rejoice the fancy of an
abbot; sharks swarm there, and chiefly round the passages, to feast upon this
plenty, and you would suppose that man had only to prepare his angle. Alas! it
is not so. Of these painted fish that came in hordes about the entering CASCO,
some bore poisonous spines, and others were poisonous if eaten. The stranger
must refrain, or take his chance of painful and dangerous sickness. The native,
on his own isle, is a safe guide; transplant him to the next, and he is helpless
as yourself. For it is a question both of time and place. A fish caught in a
lagoon may be deadly; the same fish caught the same day at sea, and only a few
hundred yards without the passage, will be wholesome eating: in a neighbouring
isle perhaps the case will be reversed; and perhaps a fortnight later you shall
be able to eat of them indifferently from within and from without. According to
the natives, these bewildering vicissitudes are ruled by the movement of the
heavenly bodies. The beautiful planet Venus plays a great part in all island
tales and customs; and among other functions, some of them more awful, she
regulates the season of good fish. With Venus in one phase, as we had her,
certain fish were poisonous in the lagoon: with Venus in another, the same fish
was harmless and a valued article of diet. White men explain these changes by
the phases of the coral.
It adds a last touch of horror to the thought of this precarious annular
gangway in the sea, that even what there is of it is not of honest rock, but
organic, part alive, part putrescent; even the clean sea and the bright fish
about it poisoned, the most stubborn boulder burrowed in by worms, the lightest
dust venomous as an apothecary's drugs.
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