CHAPTER IX

SAILING ON THE SEA-ARM OF PILOLU

I

Now at last the Kula expedition is properly set going. The canoes are started on a long stage, before them the sea-arm of Pilolu, stretching between the Trobriands and the d'Entrecasteaux. On the North, this portion of the sea is bounded by the Archipelago of the Trobriands, that is, by the islands of Vakuta, Boyowa and Kayleula, joining in the west on to the scattered belt of the Lousançay Islands. On the east, a long submerged reef runs from the southern end of Vakuta to the Amphletts, forming an extended barrier to sailing, but affording little protection from the eastern winds and seas. In the South, this barrier links on to the Amphletts, which together with the Northern coast of Fergusson and Goodenough, form the Southern shore of Pilolu. To the West, Pilolu opens up into the seas between the mainland of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. In fact, what the natives designate by the name of Pilolu is nothing else but the enormous basin of the Lousançay Lagoon, the largest coral atoll in the world. To the natives, the name of Pilolu is full of emotional associations, drawn from magic and myth; it is connected with the experiences of past generations, told by the old men round the village fires and with adventure personally lived through.

As the Kula adventurers speed along with filled sails, the shallow Lagoon of the Trobriands soon falls away behind; the dull green waters, sprinkled with patches of brown where seaweed grows high and rank, and lit up here and there with spots of bright emerald where a shallow bottom of clean sand shines through, give place to a deeper sea of strong green hue. The low strip of land, which surrounds the Trobriand Lagoon in a wide sweep, thins away and dissolves in the haze, and before them the southern mountains rise higher and higher. On a clear day, these are visible even from the Trobriands. The neat outlines of the Amphletts stand diminutive, yet firmer and more material, against the blue silhouettes of the higher mountains behind. These, like a far away cloud are draped in wreaths of cumuli, almost always clinging to their summits. The nearest of them, Koyatabu--the mountain of the taboo-- [64] on the North end of Fergusson Island, a slim, somewhat tilted pyramid, forms a most alluring beacon, guiding the mariners due South. To the right of it, as we look towards the South-West, a broad, bulky mountain, the Koyabwaga'u--mountain of the sorcerers--marks the North-western corner of Fergusson Island. The mountains on Goodenough Island are visible only in very clear weather, and then very faintly.

Within a day or two, these disembodied, misty forms are to assume what for the Trobrianders seems marvellous shape and enormous bulk. They are to surround the Kula traders with their solid walls of precipitous rock and green jungle, furrowed with deep ravines and streaked with racing water-courses. The Trobrianders will sail deep, shaded bays, resounding with the, to them unknown, voice of waterfalls; with the weird cries of strange birds which never visit the Trobriands, such as the laughing of the kookooburra (laughing jackass), and the melancholy call of the South Sea crow. The sea will change its colour once more, become pure blue, and beneath its transparent waters, a marvellous world of multi-coloured coral, fish and seaweed will unfold itself, a world which, through a strange geographical irony, the inhabitants of a coral island hardly ever can see at home, and must come to this volcanic region to discover.

In these surroundings, they will find also wonderful, heavy, compact stones of various colours and shapes, whereas at home the only stone is the insipid, white, dead coral. Here they can see, besides many types of granite and basalt and volcanic tuff, specimens of black obsidian, with its sharp edges and metallic ring, and sites full of red and yellow ochre. Besides big hills of volcanic ash, they will behold hot springs boiling up periodically. Of all these marvels the young Trobriander hears tales, and sees samples brought back to his country, and there is no doubt that it is for him a wonderful experience to find himself amongst them for the first time, and that afterwards he eagerly seizes every opportunity that offers to sail again to the Koya. Thus the landscape now before them is a sort of promised land, a country spoken of in almost legendary tone.

And indeed the scenery here, on the borderland of the two different worlds, is singularly impressive. Sailing away from the Trobriands on my last expedition, I had to spend two days, weatherbound, on a small sandbank covered with a few pandanus trees, about midway between the Trobriands and the Amphletts. A darkened sea lay to the North, big thunderclouds hanging over where I knew there was the large flat island of Boyowa--the Trobriands. To the South, against a clearer sky, were the abrupt forms of the mountains, scattered over half of the horizon. The scenery seemed saturated with myth and legendary tales, with the strange adventures, hopes and fears of generations of native sailors. On this sandbank they had often camped, when becalmed or threatened with bad weather. On such an island, the great mythical hero, Kasabwaybwayreta stopped, and was marooned by his companions, only to escape through the sky. Here again a mythical canoe once halted, in order to be re-caulked. As I sat there, looking towards the Southern mountains, so clearly visible, yet so inaccessible, I realised what must be the feelings of the Trobrianders, desirous to reach the Koya, to meet the strange people, and to kula with them, a desire made perhaps even more acute by a mixture of fear. For there, to the west of the Amphletts, they see the big bay of Gabu, where once the crews of a whole fleet of Trobriand canoes were killed and eaten by the inhabitants of unknown villages, in attempting to kula with them. And stories are also told of single canoes, drifted apart from the fleet and cast against the northern shore of Fergusson Island, of which all the crew perished at the hands of the cannibals. There are also legends of some inexperienced natives, who, visiting the neighbourhood of Deyde'i and arriving at the crystal water in the big stone basins there, plunged in, to meet a dreadful death in the almost boiling pool.

But though the legendary dangers on the distant shores may appall the native imagination, the perils of actual sailing are even more real. The sea over which they travel is seamed with reefs, studded with sandbanks and coral rocks awash. And though in fair weather these are not so dangerous to a canoe as to a European boat, yet they are bad enough. The main dangers of native sailing, however, lie in the helplessness of a canoe. As we have said before, it cannot sail close to the wind, and therefore cannot beat. If the wind comes round, the canoe has to turn and retrace its course. This is very unpleasant, but not necessarily dangerous. If, however, the wind drops, and the canoe just happens to be in one of the strong tides, which run anything between three and five knots, or if it becomes disabled, and makes leeway at right angles to its course, the situation becomes dangerous. To the West, there lies the open sea, and once far out there, the canoe would have slender chances of ever returning. To the East, there runs the reef, on which in heavy weather a native canoe would surely be smashed. In May, 1918, a Dobuan canoe, returning home a few days after the rest of the fleet, was caught by a strong South-Easterly wind, so strong that it had to give up its course, and make North-West to one of the Lousançay Islands. It had been given up as lost, when in August it came back with a chance blow of the North-Westerly wind. It had had, however, a narrow escape in making the small island. Had it been blown further West, it would never have reached land at all.

There exist other tales of lost canoes, and it is a wonder that accidents are not more frequent, considering the conditions under which they have to sail. Sailing has to be done, so to speak, on straight lines across the sea. Once they deviate from this course, all sorts of dangers crop up. Not only that, but they must sail between fixed points on the land. For, and this of course refers to the olden days, if they had to go ashore, anywhere but in the district of a friendly tribe, the perils which met them were almost as bad as those of reefs and sharks. If the sailors missed the friendly villages of the Amphletts and of Dobu, everywhere else they would meet with extermination. Even nowadays, though the danger of being killed would be smaller--perhaps not absolutely non-existent--yet the natives would feel very uncomfortable at the idea of landing in a strange district, fearing not only death by violence, but even more by evil magic. Thus, as the natives sail across Pilolu, only very small sectors of their horizon present a safe goal for their journey.

On the East, indeed, beyond the dangerous barrier reef, there is a friendly horizon, marked for them by the Marshall Bennett Islands, and Woodlark, the country known under the term Omuyuwa. To the South, there is the Koya, also known as the land of the kinana, by which name the natives of the d'Entrecasteaux and the Amphletts are known generically. But to the South-West and West there is the deep open sea (bebega), and beyond that, lands inhabited by tailed people, and by people with wings, of whom very little more is known. To the North, beyond the reef of small coral islands, lying off the Trobriands, there are two countries, Kokopawa and Kaytalugi. Kokopawa is peopled with ordinary men and women, who walk about naked, and are great gardeners. Whether this country corresponds to the South coast of New Britain, where people really are without any clothing, it would be difficult to say.

The other country, Kaytalugi, is a land of women only, in which no man can survive. The women who live there are beautiful, big and strong, and they walk about naked, and with their bodily hair unshaven (which is contrary to the Trobriand custom). They are extremely dangerous to any man through the unbounded violence of their passion. The natives never tire of describing graphically how such women would satisfy their sensuous lust, if they got hold of some luckless, shipwrecked man. No one could survive, even for a short time, the amorous yet brutal attacks of these women. The natives compare this treatment to that customary at the yousa, the orgiastic mishandling of any man, caught at certain stages of female communal labour in Boyowa (cf. Chapter II, Division II). Not even the boys born on this island of Kaytalugi can survive a tender age. It must be remembered the natives see no need for male co-operation in continuing the race. Thus the women propagate the race, although every male needs must come to an untimely end before he can become a man.

None the less, there is a legend that some men from the village of Kaulagu, in eastern Boyowa, were blown in their canoe far North from the easterly course of a Kula expedition, and were stranded on the coast of Kaytalugi. There, having survived the first reception, they were apportioned individually and married. Having repaired their canoe, ostensibly for the sake of bringing some fish to their wives, one night they put food and water into it, and secretly sailed away. On their return to their own village, they found their women married to other men. However, such things never end tragically in the Trobriands. As soon as their rightful lords reappeared their women came back to them. Among other things these men brought to Boyowa a variety of banana called usikela, not known before.

II

Returning again to our Kula party, we see that, in journeying across Pilolu, they move within the narrow confines of familiar sailing ground, surrounded on all sides both by real dangers and by lands of imaginary horrors. On their track, however, the natives never go out of sight of land, and in the event of mist or rain, they can always take sufficient bearings to enable them to make for the nearest sand-bank or island. This is never more than some six miles off, a distance which, should the wind have dropped, may even be reached by paddling.

Another thing that also makes their sailing not so dangerous as one would imagine, is the regularity of the winds in this part of the world. As a rule, in each of the two main seasons, there is one prevailing direction of wind, which does not shift more than within some ninety degrees. Thus, in the dry season, from May to October, the trade wind blows almost incessantly from the South-East or South, moving sometimes to the North-East, but never beyond that. As a matter of fact, however, this season, just because of the constancy of the wind, does not lend itself very well to native sailing. For although with this wind it is easy to sail from South to North, or East to West, it is impossible to retrace the course, and as the wind often blows for months without veering, the natives prefer to do their sailings between the seasons, or in the time when the monsoon blows. Between the seasons--November, December or March and April--the winds are not so constant, in fact they shift from one position on the compass to another. On the other hand, there is very seldom a strong blow at this time, and so this is the ideal season for sailing. In the hot summer months, December till March, the monsoon blows from the North-West or South-West, less regularly than a trade wind, but often culminating in violent storms which almost always come from the North-West. Thus the two strong winds to be met in these seas come from definite directions, and this minimises the danger. The natives also as a rule are able to foretell a day or two beforehand the approach of a squall. Rightly or wrongly, they associate the strength of the North-Westerly gales with the phases of the moon.

There is, of course, a good deal of magic to make wind blow or to put it down. Like many other forms of magic, wind magic is localised in villages. The inhabitants of Simsim, the biggest village in the Lousançay Islands, and the furthest North-Westerly settlement of this district, are credited with the ability of controlling the North-Westerly wind, perhaps through association with their geographical position. Again, the control over the South-Easterly wind is granted to the inhabitants of Kitava, lying to the East of Boyowa. The Simsim people control all the winds which blow habitually during the rainy season, that is the winds on the western side of the compass, from North to South. The other half can be worked by the Kitavan spells.

Many men in Boyowa have learnt both spells and they practise the magic. The spells are chanted broadcast into the wind, without any other ritual. It is an impressive spectacle to walk through a village, during one of the devastating gales, which always arise at night and during which people leave their huts and assemble in cleared spaces. They are afraid the wind may lift their dwellings off the ground, or uproot a tree which might injure them in falling, an accident which actually did happen a year or two ago in Wawela, killing the chief's wife. Through the darkness from the doors of some of the huts, and from among the huddled groups, there resound loud voices, chanting, in a penetrating sing-song, the spells for abating the force of the wind. On such occasions, feeling myself somewhat nervous, I was deeply impressed by this persistent effort of frail, human voice, fraught with deep belief, pitting itself so feebly against the monotonous, overpowering force of the wind.

Taking the bearing by sight, and helped by the uniformity of winds, the natives have no need of even the most elementary knowledge of navigation. Barring accidents they never have to direct their course by the stars. Of these, they know certain Outstanding constellations, sufficient to indicate for them the direction, should they need it. They have names for the Pleiades, for Orion, for the Southern Cross, and they also recognise a few constellations of their own construction. Their knowledge of the stars, as we have mentioned already in Chapter II, Division V, is localised in the village of Wawela, where it is handed over in the maternal line of the chiefs of the village.

In order to understand better the customs and problems of sailing, a few words must be said about the technique of managing a canoe. As we have said before, the wind must always strike the craft, on the outrigger side, so the sailing canoe is always tilted with its float raised, and the platform slanting towards the body of the canoe. This makes it necessary for it to be able to change bows and stern at will; for imagine that a canoe going due South, has to sail with a North-Easterly wind, then the lamina (outrigger) must be on the left hand, and the canoe sails with what the natives call its "head" forward. Now imagine that the wind turns to the North-West. Should this happen in a violent squall, without warning, the canoe would be at once submerged. But, as such a change would be gradual, barring accidents, the natives could easily cope with it. The mast, which is tied at the fourth cross-pole (ri'u) from the temporary bows of the canoe, would be unbound, the canoe would be turned 180 degrees around, so that its head would now form the stern, its u'ula (foundation) would face South, and become its bows, and the platform would be to our right, facing West. The mast would be attached again to the fourth cross-pole (ri'u), from the u'ula end, the sail hoisted, and the canoe would glide along with the wind striking it again on its outrigger side, but having changed bows to stern (see Plate XLI).

The natives have a set of nautical expressions to describe the various operations of changing mast, of trimming the sail, of paying out the sheet rope, of shifting the sail, so that it stands up with its bottom end high, and its tip touching the canoe, or else letting it lie with both boom and gaff almost horizontal. And they have definite rules as to how the various manoeuvres should be carried out, according to the strength of the wind, and to the quarter on which it strikes the canoe. They have four expressions denoting a following wind, wind striking the outrigger beam, wind striking the canoe from the katala (built-out body), and wind striking the canoe on the outrigger side close to the direction of sailing. There is no point, however, in adducing this native terminology here, as we shall not any further refer to it; it is enough to know that they have got definite rules, and means of expressing them, with regard to the handling of a canoe.

It has been often remarked here, that the Trobriand canoes cannot sail close to the wind. They are very light, and shallow, and have very little water board, giving a small resistance against making lee-way. I think that this is also the reason, why they need two men to do the steering for the steering oars act as lee-boards. One of the men wields a big, elongated steering oar, called kuriga. He sits at the stern, of course, in the body of the canoe. The other man handles a smaller steering paddle, leaf-shaped, yet with a bigger blade than the paddling oars; it is called viyoyu. He sits at the stern end of the platform, and does the steering through the sticks of the pitapatile (platform).

The other working members of the crew are the man at the sheet, the tokwabila veva, as he is called, who has to let out the veva or pull it in, according as the wind shifts and varies in strength.

Another man, as a rule, stands in the bows of the ship on the look-out, and if necessary, has to climb the mast in order to trim the rigging. Or again, he would have to bale the water from time to time, as this always leaks through, or splashes into the canoe. Thus four men are enough to man a canoe, though usually the functions of the baler and the man on the look-out and at the mast are divided.

When the wind drops, the men have to take to the small, leaf-shaped paddles, while one, as a rule, wields a pulling oar. But in order to give speed to a heavy masawa canoe, at least ten men would have to paddle and pull. As we shall see, on certain ceremonial occasions, the canoes have to be propelled by paddling, for instance when they approach their final destination, after having performed the great mwasila magic. When they arrive at a halting place, the canoes, if necessary, are beached. As a rule, however, the heavily loaded canoes on a Kula expedition, would be secured by both mooring and anchoring, according to the bottom. On muddy bottoms, such as that of the Trobriand Lagoon, a long stick would be thrust into the slime, and one end of the canoe lashed to it. From the other, a heavy stone, tied with a rope, would be thrown down as an anchor. Over a hard, rocky bottom, the anchor stone alone is used.

It can be easily understood that with such craft, and with such limitations in sailing, there are many real dangers which threaten the natives. If the wind is too strong, and the sea becomes too rough, a canoe may not be able to follow its course, and making lee-way, or even directly running before the wind, it may be driven into a quarter where there is no landfall to be made, or from where at best there is no returning at that season. This is what happened to the Dobuan boat mentioned before. Or else, a canoe becalmed and seized by the tide may not be able to make its way by means of paddling. Or in stormy weather, it may be smashed on rocks and sandbanks, or even unable to withstand the impact of waves. An open craft like a native canoe easily fills with sea water, and, in a heavy rain-storm, with rain water. In a calm sea this is not very dangerous, for the wooden canoe does not sink; even if swamped, the water can be baled out and the canoe floats up. But in rough weather, a water-logged canoe loses its buoyancy and gets broken up. Last and not least, there is the danger of the canoe being pressed into the water, outrigger first, should the wind strike it on the opposite side. With so many real dangers around it, it is a marvellous thing, and to the credit of native seamanship, that accidents are comparatively rare.

We now know about the crew of the canoe and the different functions which every man has to fulfil. Remembering what has been said in