University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXIX.

I think I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural
history of the valley.

Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier,
came those dogs that I saw in Typee? Dogs!—Big hairless
rats rather; all with smooth, shining, speckled hides—fat sides,
and very disagreeable faces. Whence could they have come?
That they were not the indigenous production of the region, I
am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of their being
interlopers, looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hide
themselves in some dark corner. It was plain enough they did
not feel at home in the vale—that they wished themselves well
out of it, and back to the ugly country from which they must
have come.

Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked
nothing better than to have been the death of every one of them.
In fact, on one occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine
crusade to Mehevi; but the benevolent king would not consent
to it. He heard me very patiently; but when I had finished,
shook his head, and told me, in confidence, that they were
"taboo."

As for the animal that made the fortune of the ex-lord-mayor
Whittington: I shall never forget the day that I was lying in
the house about noon, everybody else being fast asleep; and
happening to raise my eyes, met those of a big black spectral cat,
which sat erect in the doorway, looking at me with its frightful
goggling green orbs, like one of those monstrous imps that torment
some of Teniers' saints! I am one of those unfortunate

persons to whom the sight of these animals is at any time an
insufferable annoyance.

Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected
apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me.
When I had a little recovered from the fascination of its glance,
I started up; the cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out
of the house in pursuit; but it had disappeared. It was the only
time I ever saw one in the valley, and how it got there I cannot
imagine. It is just possible that it might have escaped from one
of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in vain to seek information
on the subject from the natives; since none of them had seen
the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me
to this day.

Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee,
there were none which I looked upon with more interest than a
beautiful golden-hued species of lizard. It measured perhaps
five inches from head to tail, and was most gracefully proportioned.
Numbers of these creatures were to be seen basking in
the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses, and multitudes at
all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as they ran
frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up and
down the tall shafts of the cocoa-nut trees. But the remarkable
beauty of these little animals and their lively ways were not
their only claims upon my admiration. They were perfectly
tame and insensible to fear. Frequently, after seating myself
upon the ground in some shady place during the heat of the day,
I would be completely overrun with them. If I brushed one off
my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair: when I tried to
frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would turn for
protection to the very hand that attacked it.

The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see
one perched upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced
towards it, it did not fly away immediately, but waited
quietly looking at you, until you could almost touch it, and then
took wing slowly, less alarmed at your presence, it would seem,
than desirous of removing itself from your path. Had salt been
less scarce in the valley than it was, this was the very place to
have gone birding with it.

I remember that once, on an uninhabited island of the Gallipagos,

a bird alighted on my outstretched arm, while its mate
chirped from an adjoining tree. Its tameness, far from shocking
me, as a similar occurrence did Selkirk, imparted to me the most
exquisite thrill of delight I ever experienced; and with somewhat
of the same pleasure did I afterwards behold the birds and
lizards of the valley show their confidence in the kindliness of
man.

Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have
entailed upon some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental
introduction among them of that enemy of all repose and
ruffler of even tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands
and at two or three of the Society group there are now thriving
colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether
the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz, and torment,
from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly exasperating
the natives materially obstruct the benevolent labours of
the missionaries.

From this grievous visitation, however, the Typees are as yet
wholly exempt; but its place is unfortunately in some degree
supplied by the occasional presence of a minute species of fly,
which, without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little
annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing
when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will
perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there, if you
do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along
the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to
explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate
as to yawn while a number of them were hovering
around me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted
into the open apartment, and began walking about its ceiling;
the sensation was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth,
and the poor creatures being enveloped in inner darkness, must
in their consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been
precipitated into the gulf beneath. At any rate, though I afterwards
charitably held my mouth open for at least five minutes,
with a view of affording egress to the stragglers, none of them
ever availed themselves of the opportunity.

There are no wild animals of any kind on the island, unless it
be decided that the natives themselves are such. The mountains

and the interior present to the eye nothing but silent solitudes,
unbroken by the roar of beasts of prey, and enlivened by few
tokens even of minute animated existence. There are no venomous
reptiles, and no snakes of any description to be found in
any of the valleys.

In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no
topic of conversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes.
The rainy season, it is true, brings frequent showers,
but they are intermitting and refreshing. When an islander
bound on some expedition rises from his couch in the morning,
he is never solicitous to peep out and see how the sky looks, or
ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is always sure
of a "fine day," and the promise of a few genial showers he hails
with pleasure. There is never any of that "remarkable weather"
on the island which from time immemorial has been experienced
in America, and still continues to call forth the wondering conversational
exclamations of its elderly citizens. Nor do there
even occur any of those eccentric meteorological changes which
elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of Typee ice-creams would
never be rendered less acceptable by sudden frosts, nor would picnic
parties be deferred on account of inauspicious snow-storms:
for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summer and
sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical month of June
just melting into July.

It is this genial climate which causes the cocoa-nuts to flourish
as they do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the
rich soil of the Marquesas, and borne aloft on a stately column
more than a hundred feet from the ground, would seem at first
almost inaccessible to the simple natives. Indeed the slender,
smooth, and soaring shaft, without a single limb or protuberance
of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presents an obstacle only
to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuity of the
islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would lead
them patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly
parting from their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This
certainly would be the case, were it not that the young fruit,
encased in a soft green husk, with the incipient meat adhering
in a jelly-like pellicle to its sides, and containing a bumper of the
most delicious nectar, is what they chiefly prize. They have at

least twenty different terms to express as many progressive stages
in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject the fruit altogether
except at a particular period of its growth, which, incredible
as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain
within an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in their
tastes; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all
ages, and ingeniously tapping them, will sip first from one and
then from another, as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber
experimenting glass in hand among his dusty demijohns of different
vintages.

Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their
comrades, and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of
walking up the trunk of the cocoa-nut trees which to me seemed
little less than miraculous; and when looking at them in the act,
I experienced that curious perplexity a child feels when he beholds
a fly moving feet uppermost along a ceiling.

I will endeavour to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble
young chief, sometimes performed this feat for my peculiar gratification;
but his preliminary performances must also be recorded.
Upon my signifying my desire that he should pluck
me the young fruit of some particular tree, the handsome savage,
throwing himself into a sudden attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment
at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining
this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on
his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to
my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the
tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his
arm, as though endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground
where he stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now
sinks to the earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted
despair; and then, starting to his feet all at once, and throwing
back his head, raises both hands, like a school-boy about to catch
a falling ball. After continuing this for a moment or two, as
if in expectation that the fruit was going to be tossed down to
him by some good spirit in the tree-top, he turns wildly round in
another fit of despair, and scampers off to the distance of thirty
or forty yards. Here he remains awhile, eyeing the tree, the
very picture of misery; but the next moment, receiving, as it
were, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and clasping

both arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little above
the other, he presses the soles of his feet close together against
the tree, extending his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal,
and his body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand
over hand and foot after foot, he rises from the earth with steady
rapidity, and almost before you are aware of it, has gained the
cradled and embowered nest of nuts, and with boisterous glee
flings the fruit to the ground.

This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the
trunk declines considerably from the perpendicular. This, however,
is almost always the case; some of the perfectly straight
shafts of the trees leaning at an angle of thirty degrees.

The less active among the men, and many of the children of
the valley, have another method of climbing. They take a broad
and stout piece of bark, and secure either end of it to their
ankles; so that when the feet thus confined are extended apart, a
space of little more than twelve inches is left between them.
This contrivance greatly facilitates the act of climbing. The
band pressed against the tree, and closely embracing it, yields a
pretty firm support; while with the arms clasped about the
trunk, and at regular intervals sustaining the body, the feet are
drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and a corresponding elevation
of the hands immediately succeeds. In this way I have seen
little children, scarcely five years of age, fearlessly climbing the
slender pole of a young cocoa-nut tree, and while hanging perhaps
fifty feet from the ground, receive the plaudits of their parents
beneath, who clapped their hands, and encouraged them to mount
still higher.

What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions,
would the nervous mothers of America and England say to a
similar display of hardihood in any of their children? The
Lacedemonian nations might have approved of it, but most
modern dames would have gone into hysterics at the sight.

At the top of the cocoa-nut tree the numerous branches, radiating
on all sides from a common centre, form a sort of green
and waving basket, between the leaflets of which you just discern
the nuts thickly clustering together, and on the loftier trees
looking no bigger from the ground than bunches of grapes. I
remember one adventurous little fellow—Too-Too was the rascal's

name—who had built himself a sort of aerial baby-house in the
picturesque tuft of a tree adjoining Marheyo's habitation. He
used to spend hours there,—rustling among the branches, and
shouting with delight every time the strong gusts of wind rushing
down from the mountain's side swayed to and fro the tall and
flexible column on which he was perched. Whenever I heard
Too-Too's musical voice, sounding strangely to the ear from so
great a height, and beheld him peeping down upon me from out
his leafy covert, he always recalled to my mind Dibdin's lines—

Birds—bright and beautiful birds—fly over the valley of
Typee. You see them perched aloft among the immovable
boughs of the majestic bread-fruit trees, or gently swaying on the
elastic branches of the Omoo; skimming over the palmetto
thatching of the bamboo huts; passing like spirits on the wing
through the shadows of the grove, and sometimes descending
into the bosom of the valley in gleaming flights from the mountains.
Their plumage is purple and azure, crimson and white,
black and gold; with bills of every tint:—bright bloody-red,
jet black, and ivory white; and their eyes are bright and sparkling;
they go sailing through the air in starry throngs; but
alas! the spell of dumbness is upon them all—there is not a
single warbler in the valley!

I know not why it was, but the sight of these birds, generally
the ministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy.
As in their dumb beauty they hovered by me whilst I was walking,
or looked down upon me with steady curious eyes from out
the foliage, I was almost inclined to fancy that they knew they
were gazing upon a stranger, and that they commiserated his
fate.