17. CHAPTER XVII.
How far we sailed to the westward after leaving the Marquesas,
or what might have been our latitude and longitude at
any particular time, or how many leagues we voyaged on our
passage to Tahiti, are matters, about which, I am sorry to say,
I can not with any accuracy enlighten the reader. Jermin, as
navigator, kept our reckoning; and, as hinted before, kept it
all to himself. At noon, he brought out his quadrant, a rusty
old thing, so odd-looking that it might have belonged to an astrologer.
Sometimes, when rather flustered from his potations, he went
staggering about deck, instrument to eye, looking all over for
the sun—a phenomenon which any sober observer might have
seen right overhead. How upon earth he contrived, on some
occasions, to settle his latitude, is more than I can tell. The
longitude, he must either have obtained by the Rule of Three,
or else by special revelation. Not that the chronometer in the
cabin was seldom to be relied on, or was any ways fidgety;
quite the contrary; it stood stock-still; and by that means, no
doubt, the true Greenwich time—at the period of its stopping,
at least—was preserved to a second.
The mate, however, in addition to his “Dead Reckoning,”
pretended to ascertain his meridian distance from Bow Bells
by an occasional lunar observation. This, I believe, consists
in obtaining with the proper instruments, the angular distance
between the moon and some one of the stars. The operation
generally requires two observers to take sights, at one and the
same time.
Now, though the mate alone might have been thought well
calculated for this, inasmuch as he generally saw things double,
the doctor was usually called upon to play a sort of second
quadrant to Jermin's first; and what with the capers of both, they
used to furnish a good deal of diversion. The mate's tremulous
attempts to level his instrument at the star he was after,
were comical enough. For my own part, when he did catch
sight of it, I hardly knew how he managed to separate it from
the astral host revolving in his own brain.
However, by hook or by crook, he piloted us along; and before
many days, a fellow sent aloft to darn a rent in the fore-top-sail,
threw his hat into the air, and bawled out “Land, ho!”
Land it was; but in what part of the South Seas, Jermin
alone knew, and some doubted whether even he did. But no
sooner was the announcement made, than he came running on
deck, spy-glass in hand, and clapping it to his eye, turned round
with the air of a man receiving indubitable assurance of something
he was quite certain of before. The land was precisely
that for which he had been steering; and, with a wind, in less
than twenty-four hours we would sight Tahiti. What he said
was verified.
The island turned out to be one of the Pomotu or Low
Group—sometimes called the Coral Islands—perhaps the most
remarkable and interesting in the Pacific. Lying to the east
of Tahiti, the nearest are within a day's sail of that place.
They are very numerous; mostly small, low, and level;
sometimes wooded, but always covered with verdure. Many
are crescent-shaped; others resemble a horse-shoe in figure.
These last are nothing more than narrow circles of land, surrounding
a smooth lagoon, connected by a single opening with
the sea. Some of the lagoons, said to have subterranean out
lets, have no visible ones; the inclosing island, in such cases,
being a complete zone of emerald. Other lagoons still, are girdled
by numbers of small, green islets, very near to each other.
The origin of the entire group is generally ascribed to the
coral insect.
According to some naturalists, this wonderful little creature,
commencing its erections at the bottom of the sea, after the
lapse of centuries, carries them up to the surface, where its labors
cease. Here, the inequalities of the coral collect all floating
bodies; forming, after a time, a soil, in which the seeds carried
thither by birds, germinate, and cover the whole with vegetation.
Here and there, all over this archipelago, numberless
naked, detached coral formations are seen, just emerging, as it
were, from the ocean. These would appear to be islands in
the very process of creation—at any rate, one involuntarily
concludes so, on beholding them.[5]
As far as I know, there are but few bread-fruit trees in any
part of the Pomotu group. In many places the cocoa-nut even
does not grow; though, in others, it largely flourishes. Consequently,
some of the islands are altogether uninhabited; others
support but a single family; and in no place is the population
very large. In some respects the natives resemble the Tahitians:
their language, too, is very similar. The people of the
southeasterly clusters—concerning whom, however, but little
is known—have a bad name as cannibals; and for that reason
their hospitality is seldom taxed by the mariner.
Within a few years past, missionaries from the Society group
have settled among the leeward islands, where the natives have
treated them kindly. Indeed, nominally, many of these people
are now Christians; and, through the political influence of their
instructors, no doubt, a short time since came under the allegiance
of Pomaree, the Queen of Tahiti; with which island
they always carried on considerable intercourse.
The Coral Islands are principally visited by the pearl-shell
fishermen, who arrive in small schooners, carrying not more
than five or six men.
For a long while the business was engrossed by Merenhout,
the French Consul at Tahiti, but a Dutchman by birth, who,
in one year, is said to have sent to France fifty thousand dollars'
worth of shells. The oysters are found in the lagoons, and
about the reefs; and, for half-a-dozen nails a-day, or a compensation
still less, the natives are hired to dive after them.
A great deal of cocoa-nut oil is also obtained in various places.
Some of the uninhabited islands are covered with dense groves;
and the ungathered nuts which have fallen year after year, lie
upon the ground in incredible quantities. Two or three men,
provided with the necessary apparatus for trying out the oil,
will, in the course of a week or two, obtain enough to load one
of the large sea-canoes.
Cocoa-nut oil is now manufactured in different parts of the
South Seas, and forms no small part of the traffic carried on
with trading vessels. A considerable quantity is annually exported
from the Society Islands to Sydney. It is used in lamps
and for machinery, being much cheaper than the sperm, and,
for both purposes, better than the right-whale oil. They bottle
it up in large bamboos, six or eight feet long; and these
form part of the circulating medium of Tahiti.
To return to the ship. The wind dying away, evening came
on before we drew near the island. But we had it in view during
the whole afternoon.
It was small and round, presenting one enameled level, free
from trees, and did not seem four feet above the water. Beyond
it was another and larger island, about which a tropical
sunset was throwing its glories; flushing all that part of the
heavens, and making it flame like a vast dyed oriel illuminated.
The Trades scarce filled our swooning sails; the air was
languid with the aroma of a thousand strange, flowering shrubs.
Upon inhaling it, one of the sick, who had recently shown symptoms
of scurvy, cried out in pain, and was carried below. This
is no unusual effect in such instances.
On we glided, within less than a cable's length of the shore,
which was margined with foam that sparkled all round. Within,
nestled the still, blue lagoon. No living thing was seen, and,
for aught we knew, we might have been the first mortals who
had ever beheld the spot. The thought was quickening to the
fancy; nor could I help dreaming of the endless grottoes and
galleries, far below the reach of the mariner's lead.
And what strange shapes were lurking there! Think of
those arch creatures, the mermaids, chasing each other in and
out of the coral cells, and catching their long hair in the coral
twigs!
