Chapter 20

After a while the contents of the chests, and even the chests themselves--esteemed by the Tahitians most valuable pieces of furniture--were given or bartered away, and, as the Consul still refused them rations, the sailors knew not how to live. The natives helped them as much as they could, but their larders were scantily furnished, and they grew tired of feeding fifteen hungry idlers. So at last the latter made a morning call upon the Consul, who, being unwilling to withdraw, and equally so to press, charges which he knew would not be sustained, refused to have any thing to say to them. Thereupon some of the party, strong in principle and resolution, and seeing how grievous an annoyance their presence was to their enemy, Wilson, swore to abide near him and never to leave him. Others, less obstinate or more impatient of a change, resolved to decamp from the Calabooza. The first to depart were Typee and Long Ghost. They had received intelligence of a new plantation in Imeco, recently formed by foreigners, who wanted white labourers, and were expected at Papeetee to seek them. With these men they took service under the names of Peter and Paul, at wages of fifteen silver dollars a month; and, after an affecting separation from their shipmates--whose respectable character may be judged of by the fact, that one of them picked Long Ghost's pocket in the very act of embracing him,--they sailed away for Imeco, and arrived without accident in the valley of Martair, where the plantation was situate. The chapters recording their stay here are amongst the very best in the book, full of rich, quiet fun. Typee gives a capital description of his employers. They were two in number, both "whole-souled fellows; one was a tall robust Yankee, born in the backwoods of Maine, sallow, and with a long face; the other, a short little Cockney who had first clapped his eyes on the Monument." Zeke the Yankee, had christened his comrade "Shorty;" and Shorty looked up to him with respect, and yielded to him in most things. Both showed themselves well disposed towards their new labourers, whom they at once discovered to be superior to their station. And they soon found their society so agreeable, that they were willing to keep them to do little more than nominal work. As to making them efficient farm servants, they quickly gave up that idea. As a sailor, Typee had little fancy for husbandry; and the doctor found his long back terribly in his way when requested to dig potatoes and root up stumps, under a sun which, as Shorty said, "was hot enough to melt the nose hoff a brass monkey." Long Ghost very soon gave in; the extraction of a single tree-root settled him; he pleaded illness, and retired to his hammock, but was considerably vexed when he heard the Yankee propose a bullock hunting expedition, in which, as a sick man, he could not decently take part. This was only the prologue to his annoyances. Musquitoes, unknown in Tahiti, abound in Imeeo. They were brought there, according to a native tradition, by one Nathan Coleman, of Nantucket, who, in revenge for some fancied grievance, towed a rotten water-cask ashore, and left it in a neglected _taro_ patch, where the ground was moist and warm. Musquitoes were the result. "When tormented by them, I found much relief in coupling the word Coleman with another of one syllable, and pronouncing them together energetically." The musquito chapter is very amusing, showing the various comical and ingenious manoeuvres of the friends to avoid their tormentors, and obtain a night's sleep. At last they entered a fishing canoe, paddled some distance from shore, and dropped the native anchor, a stone secured to a rope. They were awakened in the morning by the motion of their boat. Zeke was wading in the shallow water, and towing them from a reef towards which they had drifted. "The water-sprites had rolled our stone out of its noose, and we had floated away." This was a narrow escape, but nevertheless they stuck to their floating bedstead as the only possible sleeping place. A day's successful hunting, followed by a famous supper and jollification under a banian-tree, put the doctor in good humour, and he made himself vastly agreeable. The natives beheld his waggish pranks with infinite admiration, and Zeke looked upon him with particular favour; so much so, that when upon the following morning an order came from a ship at Papeetee, for a supply of potatoes, he almost hesitated to tell funny Peter to assist in digging them up. But the emergency pressed, and the work must be done. So Peter and Paul were set to unearth the vegetables. This was no very cruel task, for "the rich tawny soil seemed specially adapted to the crop; the great yellow murphies rolling out of the hills like eggs from a nest." But when they were dug up, they had to be carried to the beach; and to this part of the business the lazy adventurers had a special dislike, although Zeke kindly provided them, to lighten their toil, with what he called the barrel machine--a sort of rural sedan, in which the servants carried their loads with comparative ease, whilst their employers sweated under shouldered hampers. But no alleviation could reconcile the sailor and the physician to this novel and unpleasant labour, and the potato-digging was the last piece of work, deserving the name, that either of them did. A few days afterwards they gave their masters warning, greatly to the vexation of Zeke, although he received the notice--with true Yankee imperturbability. He proposed that Long Ghost, who, after the hunt, had shown, considerable culinary skill, should assume the office of cook, and that Paul-Typee should only work when it suited him, which would not have been very often. The offer was friendly and favourable, but it was refused. A hospitable invitation to remain as guests as long as was convenient to them, was likewise rejected, and, bent upon a ramble, the restless adventurers left the vale of Martair. Even greater inducements would probably have been insufficient to keep them there. They had been so long on the rove, that change of scene had become essential to their happiness. The doctor, especially, was anxious to be off to Tamai, an inland village on the borders of a lake, where the fruits were the finest, and the women the most beautiful and unsophisticated in all the Society Islands. Epicurean Long Ghost had set his mind upon visiting this terrestrial paradise, and thither his steady chum willingly accompanied him. It was a day's journey on foot, allowing time for dinner and siesta; and the path lay through wood and ravine, unpeopled save by wild cattle. About noon they reached the heart of the island, thus pleasantly described. "It was a green, cool hollow among the mountains, into which we at last descended with a bound. The place was gushing with a hundred springs, and shaded over with great solemn trees, on whose mossy boles the moisture stood in beads." There is something delightfully hydropathic in these lines; they cool one like a shower-bath. He is a prime fellow, this common sailor Melville, at such scraps of description, terse and true, placing the scene before us in ten words. In long yarns he indulges not, but of such happy touches as the above, we could quote a score. We have not room, either for them, or for an account of the valley of Tamai, its hospitable inhabitants, and its heathenish dances, performed in secret, and in dread of the missionaries, by whom such saturnalia are forbidden. The place was altogether so pleasant, that the doctor and his friend entertained serious thoughts of settling there, or at least of making a long stay, when one morning they were put to flight by the arrival of strangers, said to be missionaries, with whom, vagrants as they were, they had no wish to fall in. So they returned to their friend Zeke, nursing new and ambitious projects. They had no intention of remaining with the good-hearted Yankee, but merely paid him a flying visit, and that with an interested motive. What they wanted of him was this. Although feeling themselves gentlemen every inch, they were not always able to convince the world of their respectability. So they resolved to have a passport, and pitched upon Zeke to manufacture it, he being well known and much respected in Imeeo. Zeke was gratified by the compliment, and set to work with a rooster's quill, and a piece of dirty paper. "Evidently he was not accustomed to composition; for his literary throes were so violent, that the doctor suggested that some sort of a Caesarian operation might be necessary. The precious paper was at last finished; and a great curiosity it was. We were much diverted with his reasons for not dating it. 'In this here damned climate,' he observed, 'a feller can't keep the run of the months, no how; 'cause there's no seasons, no summer and winter to go by. One's etarnally thinking it's always July, it's so pesky hot.' A passport provided, we cast about for some means of getting to Taloo."

The decline of the Tahitian monarchy--the degradation of the regal house of Pomaree, is painful to contemplate. The queen still wears a crown--a tinsel one, received as a present from her sister-sovereign of England,--she has also a court and a palace, such as they are; but her power is little more than nominal, her exchequer seldom otherwise than empty. Typee draws a touching contrast between times past and present. "'I'm a greater man than King George,' said the incorrigible young Otoo, to the first missionaries; 'he rides on a horse and I on a man.' Such was the case. He travelled post through his dominions on the shoulders of his subjects, and relays of immortal beings were provided in all the valleys. But, alas! how times have changed! how transient human greatness! Some years since, Pomaree Vahinee I., granddaughter of the proud Otoo, went into the laundry business, publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging to officers of ships touching in her harbours." Into the court of this washerwoman-queen, Typee and Long Ghost were exceedingly anxious to penetrate. Vague ideas of favour and preferment haunted their brains. During their Polynesian cruise, they had seen many instances of rapid advancement; vagabond foreigners, of all nations, domesticated in the families of chiefs and kings, and sometimes married to their daughters and sharing their power. At one of the Tonga islands, a scamp of a Welshman officiated as cupbearer to the king of the cannibals. The monarch of the Sandwich islands has three foreigners about his court--a Negro to beat the drum, a wooden-legged Portuguese to play the fiddle, and Mordecai, a juggler, to amuse his majesty with cups and balls and sleight of hand. On the Marquesan island of Hivarhoo, they had found an English sailor who had attained to the highest dignity in the country. He had deserted from a merchant ship, and at once set up, on his own hook, as an independent sovereign, without dominions, but by disposition most belligerent. A musket and a store of cartridges were his whole possessions; but in a land where war was rife, carried on with the primitive weapons of spear and javelin, they were sufficiently important to make a native prince covet his alliance. His first battle was a decisive victory, a perfect Waterloo, and he became the Wellington of Hivarhoo, receiving, as reward for his distinguished services, the hand of a princess, and a splendid dowry of hogs, mats, and other produce. To conform to the prejudices of his new family, he allowed himself to be tattooed, tabooed, and otherwise paganized, becoming as big a savage as any in the island. A blue shark adorned his forehead; a broad bar, of the same colour, traversed his face. The tabooing was a less ornamental but more decidedly useful formality, for by it his person was declared sacred and inviolable. Typee and his medical friend had a strong prejudice against cerulean sharks and the like embellishments; but if these could be dispensed with, they felt no disinclination to form part of Pomaree's household. They had not quite made up their minds what office would best suit them, but their circumstances were unprosperous, and they resolved not to be particular. They understood that the queen was mustering around her all the foreigners she could recruit, to make head against the French. She was then at Taloo, a village on the coast of Imeeo, and thither the two adventurers betook themselves, hoping to be at once elevated to important posts at court; but quite resigned, in case of disappointment, to work as day-labourers in a sugar-plantation, or go to sea in a whaler, then in the harbour for wood and water. Disgusted with their desultory, hand-to-mouth existence, they yearned after respectability and a prime-ministership. To their sanguine anticipations, both of these seemed easy of attainment. Long Ghost, indeed, who, amongst his various accomplishments, was a very Orpheus upon the violin, insisted strongly upon the probability of his becoming a Tahitian Rizzio. But a necessary preliminary to the realisation of these day-dreams, was a presentation at court, and that was difficult to obtain. Once before Queen Pomaree, they doubted not but she, with Napoleonic sagacity, would discern their merits, and forthwith make Typee her admiral, and Long Ghost inspector-general of hospitals. But they lacked an introduction. The proper course, according to the practice of travelling nobodies, desirous of intruding their plebeianism into a foreign court, would have been to apply to their ambassadors. Unfortunately Deputy-Consul Wilson, the only person at hand of a diplomatic character, was by no means disposed to act as master of the ceremonies to the insurgents of the Julia. And their costume, it must be confessed, scarcely qualified them to appear at levee or drawing-room. A short time previously, their ragged and variegated garb had given them much the look of a brace of Polynesian Robert Macaires. Typee had made himself a new frock out of two old ones, a blue and a red, the irregular mingling of the colours producing a pleasing parrot-like effect; a tattered shirt of printed calico was twisted round his head, turban-fashion, the sleeves dangling behind, and bullock's-hide sandals protected his feet. The doctor was still more fantastical in his attire. He sported a _roora_, a garment similar to the South American poncho, a sort of mantle or blanket, with a hole in the centre, through which the head passes. This simple article of apparel, which in the doctor's case was of coarse brown tappa, fell in folds around his angular carcass, and in conjunction with a broad-brimmed hat of Panama grass, gave him the aspect of a decayed grandee. Thus clad, the two friends arrived in the neighbourhood of the royal residence, and there were fortunate enough to fall in with Mrs Po-Po, a benevolent Tahitian matron, who provided them with clean frocks and trousers, such as sailors wear, and in all respects was as good as a mother to them. Her husband, Jeremiah Po-Po, a man of substance and consideration, made them welcome in his house, fed and fostered them, without hope of fee or recompense. A little of this generous hospitality was owing to the hypocrisy of that villain, Long Ghost, who, finding his entertainers devoutly disposed, muttered a "Grace before Meat" over the succulent little porkers, baked _a la facon de Barbarie_ in the ground, upon which their kind-hearted Amphitrion regaled them. But neither clean canvass, nor simulated piety, sufficed to draw upon the ambitious schemers the favourable notice of Queen Pomaree. Accustomed to sailors, she held them cheap. A uniform, though but the moth-eaten undress of a militia ensign, would have been a powerful auxiliary to their projects of aggrandisement. Like some others of her sex, Pomaree loves a soldier's coat, and maintained in more prosperous days a formidable regiment of body-guards, in pasteboard shakos, and without breeches.

To go to court, however, Typee and his comrade were fully resolved; and they were not very scrupulous as to the manner of their introduction. They made up to a Marquesan gentleman of herculean proportions, whose office it was to take the princes of the blood an airing in his arms. Typee, who spoke his language, and had been at his native village, soon ingratiated himself with Marbonna, who introduced them to one of the queen's chamberlains. Bribery and corruption now came into play: a plug of tobacco, proved an excellent passport to within the royal precincts, but then Marbonna was suddenly called away, and the intruders found themselves abandoned to their fate amongst the ladies of the court, amiable and affable damsels, whom a little "soft sawder" induced to conduct them into the queen's own drawing room. Here were collected numerous costly articles of European manufacture, sent as presents to Pomaree. Writing-desks, cut glass and beautiful china, valuable engravings, and gilt candelabras, arms and instruments of all kinds, lay scratched and broken, musty and rusting amongst greasy calabashes, old matting, paddles, fish-spears, and rubbish of all kinds. It was supper-time; and presently the queen came out of her private boudoir, attired in a blue silk gown and rich shawls, but without shoes or stockings. She lay down upon a mat, and fed herself with her fingers. Presumptuous Long Ghost, unabashed before royalty, was for immediately introducing himself and friend; but the attendants opposed this forward proceeding, and, in doing so, made such a fuss that the queen looked up from her calabash of fish, perceived the strangers, and ordered them out. Such was the first and last interview between Typee the mariner and Pomaree the queen.

"Disappointed in going to court, we determined upon going to sea." The Leviathan, an American whaler, lay in harbour, and Typee shipped on board her. Long Ghost would have done the same, but the Yankee captain disliked the cut of his jib, swore he was a "Sidney bird," and would have nought to say to him. So Typee divided his advance of wages with the medical spectre--drank with him a parting bottle of wine, surreptitiously purchased from a pilfering member of Pomaree's household--and sailed on a whaling cruise to the coast of Japan. We look forward with confidence and interest to an account of what there befel him.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] _Omoo; A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas._ By HERMAN MELVILLE. London: 1847.

ON THE NUTRITIVE QUALITIES OF THE BREAD NOW IN USE.

BY PROFESSOR JOHNSTON.

A few plain words on this subject may not be unacceptable to the popular reader at the present time.

We are fond of what is agreeable to the eye as well as pleasant to the taste, and therefore we love to have our bread made of the whitest and finest of the wheat. Attaching superior excellence to what thus pleases the eye, we call the good Scotch bannock an inferior food, and the wholesome black bread of the north of Europe a disgusting article of diet. When our experience and knowledge are local and confined, our opinions necessarily partake of a similar character.

In regard to the different qualities of wheaten flour, our judgments are not so severe. All things which pertain to this aristocratic grain--this staff of English life--like the liveries and horses of a great man--are treated with a certain degree of respect. Still, they are only the appendages of the noble seed, and the more thoroughly they are got rid of, the better the kernel is supposed to become.

In many of our old-fashioned families, indeed, the practice still lingers of baking bread from the whole meal of wheat for common use in the kitchen or hall, and for occasional consumption on the master's table. An enthusiastic physician also now and then rouses himself, and does battle with the national organs of taste on behalf of the darker bread, and the browner flour--and dyspeptic old gentlemen or mammas who have over-pampered their sickly darlings, listen to his fervid warnings, and the star of the brown loaf is for a month or two in the ascendant.

But gradually the warning sound is lost to the alarmed ear, and the pulses of the commoved air waft it on to mingle with the thousand other long-quenched voices which people the distant realms of space, and form together that unutterable harmony which, by consent of the poets, is named the music of the spheres.

There are times, however, when good men, though aware of this passing tendency of human efforts, and of the thankless impotency of a struggle against the public voice--that _vox populi_ which wise men (so-called) have pronounced to be also _vox Dei_--will nevertheless return to what they believe to be a useful though unvalued labour. The present is one in which any thing which can be said in favour of the less-valued parts of our imperial grain, will be more readily listened to than at any other period in the life-time of the existing generation; and being listened to, may be productive of the greatest national good.

I propose, therefore, to show, in an intelligible manner, that whole meal flour is really more nourishing, as well as more wholesome, than fine white flour as food for man.

The solid parts of the human body consist, principally, of three several portions: the fat, the muscle, and the bone. These three substances are liable to constant waste in the living body, and therefore must be constantly renewed from the food that we eat. The vegetable food we consume contains these three substances almost ready formed. The plant is the brick-maker. The animal voluntarily introduces these bricks into its stomach, and then involuntarily--through the operation of the mysterious machinery within--picks out these bricks, transports them to the different parts of the body, and builds them into their appropriate places. As the miller at his mill throws into the hopper the unground grain, and forthwith, by the involuntary movements of the machinery, receives in his several sacks the fine flour, the seconds, the middlings, the pollard, and the bran; so in the human body, by a still more refined separation, the fat is extracted and deposited here, the muscular matter there, and the bony material in a third locality, where it can not only be stored up, but where its presence is actually at the moment necessary.

Again, the fluid parts of the body contain the same substances in a liquid form, on their way to or from the several parts of the body in which they are required. They include also a portion of salt or saline matter which is dissolved in them, as we dissolve common salt in our soup, or Epsom salts in the pleasant draughts with which our doctors delight to vex us. This saline matter is also obtained from the food.

Now, it is self-evident, that that food must be the most nourishing which supplies all these ingredients of the body most abundantly on the whole, or in proportions most suited to the actual wants of the individual animal to which it is given.

How stands the question, then, in regard to this point between the brown bread and the white--the fine flour, and the whole meal of wheat?

The grain of wheat consists of two parts, with which the miller is familiar--the inner grain and the skin that covers it. The inner grain gives the pure wheat flour; the skin, when separated, forms the bran. The miller cannot entirely peel off the skin from his grain, and thus some of it is unavoidably ground up with his flour. By sifting, he separates it more or less completely: his seconds, middlings, &c., owing their colour to the proportion of brown bran that has passed through the sieve along with the flour. The whole meal, as it is called, of which the so-named brown _household bread_ is made, consists of the entire grain ground up together--used as it comes from the mill-stones unsifted, and therefore containing all the bran.