Part 13

Looking in the direction opposite from where the monarch of the day had disappeared, the cloudless sky brightened over the bare gray mountain-peak, and the stars, in joyful anticipation of the approaching event, abandoned their stoic immobility and trembled in feverish excitement. An impressive silence reigned in the little city, broken now and then by the almost noiseless footsteps of half-naked, barefoot natives, or the clattering of the hoofs of a horse and humming of the wheels of a passing cart, and, once or twice, by the whirr of the only automobile in the island, steered by an enterprising, prosperous French merchant.

Nature awoke from her noonday slumber, the glossy leaves resumed their natural shape and freshness, the drooping flowers revived, expanded and exhaled their fragrance, perfuming the evening air. The birds had found shelter and protection for the night in the leafy domes of the many beautiful shade and ornamental trees. It was solemn eveningtide, when the heart of man is most receptive for noble and pure impressions. It was the time to turn away the thoughts from the busy, selfish world and reflect upon the wonders of creation. It was the time to look upward to the calm, pale, blue sky, feebly illuminated by the soft light of countless tiny lamps suspended by invisible cords from the limitless space above. It was the time to look beyond earthly things. It was the time to understand:

The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.

CICERO.

We were speechless spectators of the passing and coming. Our thoughts were turned to the invisible hand that created the earth we inhabit and all of the heavenly bodies, and which directs their movements with infallible precision and unfailing regularity. We thought of things incomprehensible to man, of things far beyond the grasp of the human mind, of things known only to the Almighty Lord, Creator of all things in heaven and earth.

With our eyes fixed on the gateway of entrance of the Queen of Night, we patiently awaited her arrival, anxious, however, to catch the first glimpse of her beautiful face. No blare of trumpets or bugle call announced her approach. She rose in the sky silently, resplendent in her own magic beauty, and her charms are always sweetest when the nights are calm and peaceful. She combined beauty with two of the most attractive feminine virtues—modesty and gentleness. As we watched her regal entrance into the sky, the golden arch assumed the deep yellow hue of the precious metal it resembled, and, in a few moments, the pale rim of her sweet face rose over the dark, bald mountain-peak, and ascended slowly and majestically, higher and higher, away from earthly things, on her journey through the pathless sky. This evening she appeared in perfect glory, permitting us to look into her full, calm face. Her consort, the sun, had just disappeared, leaving behind him a golden crescent on the opposite horizon. She was following his pathway and had taken possession of his throne for the night. The departing sun and the ascending moon were in strange and pleasing contrast at the threshold of that beautiful night.

O! belle nuit! mit preferable au jour!

Premier nuit a amour consacree!

En sa faveur, prolonge ta duree,

Et du soleil retarde le retour.

DE MALFILATRE.

The moon loves to reign in peace and quietude. She abhors the tumult of the battle-field and the struggles of man for wealth and honor. She is the friend of the wounded, the sick and the poor; and the guardian angel of all those in need of repose. As she ascended heavenward, the rippling ocean became a great mirror, a mirror worthy to reflect her beautiful face. The soft, pale light streaming out from the silvery orb cast phantom-like shadows in the forests, parks and streets. Solemnity reigned supreme.

On seas, on earth, and all that in them dwell,

A death-like and deep silence fell.

WALLER.

Happy the people who respect and love the Queen of Night and her reign of peace and rest! Charming Queen! Retard your journey, prolong your peaceful mission for the well-being of your loyal subjects so much in need of your calming influence and of your soft, soothing light! To such petitions the goddess of the sky has only one inflexible reply: "The universe is my kingdom, the earth you live in is only one of my smallest possessions. I must remain loyal to all of my realms."

This evening in Tahiti had another and still more sublime entertainment in store for us, a spectacle which can be seen in perfection only in the tropics, and, I imagine, Tahiti is the stage more perfect than any other in the world for the display of one of nature's grandest exhibitions. The soft light of the rising moon and the myriads of tiny, flickering stars furnished the illumination; the mountains, forests, harbor and ocean, the stage. We were roused from our reverie by distant peals of thunder. Looking in the direction whence these reports came, we saw black, angry clouds hovering about the mountain-peaks to the south and east of Papeete. The clouds were too heavy for the rarified mountain air and soon began to descend slowly but steadily until they wrapped the towering summits in a cloak of sombre black. The mountain-peaks, which but a short time before were caressed by the gentle, silvery light of the moon, were now completely obscured. Where did these clouds come from? No one could tell. No one could mistake their movements. They appeared to have had only one object in view, and that was to embrace the mountain-range well below the tree-line. Smaller clouds, fragments from the main mass, moving more swiftly in the evening air, impelled by the land-breeze, floated away from the dark wall enveloping the mountainsides, which seemed to possess some subtle, magnetic power buried in the Immense piles of volcanic rocks. At short intervals, great zigzag chains of lightning shot through these dark clouds, momentarily lighting up the dark, unbroken, primeval forest. These dazzling, blinding flashes of lightning were in strong contrast with the soft, tropic moonshine that remained outside of the limits of the aerial sea of clouds, which had commenced to discharge a drenching rain. Fleecy little wandering clouds now flecked the horizon, strangely and variously painted by the moonlight, shortly before the midnight hour. Through fissures in these fleeting, snowy clouds, the moon and stars often peeped at the grand spectacle which was being enacted on the stage below. Lightning and thunder came nearer and nearer with the approach of the weeping mass of clouds. The bolts of lightning must have found their marks with unerring precision in the crags and forest underneath the roof of dense clouds, as from there came at short intervals deafening peals of thunder reverberating through the calm evening air far out over the surface of the sleeping ocean, where the reverberations died out in a faint rumbling.

This majestic but awesome sight was of short duration. The pouring rain relieved the clouds of their abnormal weight, and, balloon-like, they rose, clearing the mountain-range, which then again made its appearance in the soft, bewitching moonlight of the tropics. Lightning and thunder retreated with the disappearance of the clouds. The atmosphere was cool and refreshing, purified by the pouring rain and the furious electric storm. At this stage of the nightly display in our immediate vicinity, in front of the veranda of the little hotel, in full view of the now deserted stage, from the clear, cloudless sky, gigantic drops of rain fell, sparkling in the magic moonlight like diamonds that had become loosened and had fallen from the jeweled crown of the Queen of Night, whose throne had then reached the zenith of the horizon.

Instead of wishing for an encore after such a brilliant act given by nature's artists, we took one more and last look at the serene, smiling, full face of the moon, and were then prepared to acknowledge reverently:

What else is nature but God, and divine reason, residing in the whole world and its parts.

SENECA.

IORANA!

The South Sea Islanders have beautiful words of welcome with which they meet the stranger. The Samoan greets you with _talofa_; the Hawaiian, with a clear, musical voice, welcomes you with _aloha nui_; and the Tahitian, with an open, friendly face and a smile, when he meets you, addresses you with that beautiful greeting, _iorana_. These euphonious words mean more than the words of our language intended for the same purpose; they come from the heart and are addressed to the heart much more so than our "Welcome," "How do you do?" "How are you?" or "I am glad to see you." These Polynesian words are not only words of welcome, but carry with them the best wishes of the natives for the stranger; they signify not only a formality, but also express a sincerity which is so often lacking in our conventional meetings with friends and strangers. The visitor who remains long enough in Tahiti to become acquainted with the natives will find that their greeting, _iorana_, is verified by their actions. The natives, educated and ignorant, young and old, are polite, friendly and hospitable to a fault. They are fond of making little gifts to strangers, and if these are reciprocated, they are really and honestly grateful. The people are charming, the island beautiful, and nature's storehouse never empty of the choicest that the sea can supply and the soil can produce. Any one who has seen Tahiti, the Island Paradise, on leaving it, and ever after, in recalling his experiences and observations in this island of peace, rest, charms and pleasures, will give expression to his feelings by repeating to himself.

Isle of Beauty!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder:

Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!

BAYLY.

THE END

ADDENDA

TAHITI

The waves that touch thy pebbly beach

With soft, caressing hand;

The scented breezes winging past

Above thy favored land;

The brilliant flowers, the glowing fruits,

Close to thy bosom pressed,

All, all are singing one sweet song,

Whose soft refrain is, Rest!

The sunset brush that tints thy skies

With wondrous, varied rays;

The birds that fill thy woodland haunts

With music's roundelays;

The sparkling streams meandering through

Thy valleys ever blest.

All, all are breathing one sweet song.

Whose soft refrain is, Rest!

The twilight hour that floods the soul

With waves of perfect calm.

Then gives us to the Queen of Night,

Who pours her soothing balm;

The still lagoon with coral reefs

Where beauty makes its nest.

All, all are breathing one sweet song.

Whose soft refrain is, Rest!

O Isle of Beauty! poets may

Dip pens in wells of light,

Or soar aloft on Fancy's wings

In wild, aerial flight;

But they can never voice thy charms,

O Island of the Blest!

Whose very air is perfumed with

The fragrance rare of Rest!

O Isle of Beauty! artists may

Coax every varied hue,

To lay upon the canvas wide

A portrait true of you;

But till they borrow heaven's power

To paint thee. Island Blest,

The task is vain, O Land of Peace,

Whose every breeze sings Rest!

Where man knows all the blissful charm

Of care-free, deep content;

Where life seems one long holiday

In childish gladness spent;

Where earth and air and sea and sky

So close to God seem pressed;

Ah, loath am I to turn from thee.

Dear Land of Perfect Rest!

MARY E. GRIFFIN.

THE STORY OF ARIITAIMAI OF TAHITI[1]

I wish peace, and any terms prefer

Before the last extremities of war.

DRYDEN.

In one of the far-off isles of the South Seas, in the garden-spot of the Pacific, in golden Tahiti, about the year 1848, when Victoria was a young queen and mother, when France was in the throes of a second revolution, when the United States, a young republic, was still on trial before the old world, there was enacted one of the most touching dramas history has ever recorded, and this among a people considered savages by the so-called civilized world, and almost unknown until discovered through the missionary fervor of a few priests. The place, a small island, only a speck on the map; the _dramatis personæ_, France, England and America, the hereditary chiefs of a people who for forty generations had known no other rulers, a weak, vacillating native queen, and a noble-hearted native woman who knew how to be at the same time a loyal subject, a skilled diplomat, and that rarer and more beautiful thing, a faithful friend. If you would hear a story of friendship pure and undefiled, listen to the story of Ariitaimai of Papara, a Tahitian of noble birth, a child of Nature in its wildest and grandest aspect, rocked in a gigantic cradle of sea, sky and towering mountains, in a land of palm forests, where Nature has provided everything necessary to the life of her children, and where the pearls are the purest. If Cicero had known the story of Ariitaimai he would not have written in _De Amicitia_: "But where will you find one who will not prefer to friendship, public honors and power, one who will prefer the advancement of his friend in public office to his own? For human nature is too weak to despise power." But to understand this thrilling and eventful drama, we must listen first to the chorus reciting something of the history of this strange people, and of the position of woman in a land where suffrage societies are unknown, and where the story of the inequality of the sexes had never been told by book or priest. Tahiti, Matea and Moorea are known as the Windward Islands of the Society Group in the South Seas. The Leeward Islands comprise the four kingdoms, Huahine, Borabora, Raiatea and Tahaa, together with some smaller islands, and are about one hundred and twenty miles from Tahiti. But it has always been in Tahiti, the gem of the Pacific, that the interest has been centered, and it was here that the struggle took place between the English and the French for supremacy in the South Seas.

It was in 1769 that Captain Cook entered Matavai Bay on his first voyage to observe the transit of Venus. This spot is marked by a stone monument and has been known ever since as Point Venus. At this time Cook estimated the number of inhabitants at two hundred thousand. To-day, after the long contention between the French and English for supremacy, after the brave struggle of the natives against both for independence, after all the ravages made by the diseases introduced by foreigners, and after years of a fearful mortality caused by the enervating effect of civilization upon a people suited only to be children of Nature, this goodly number has been reduced to a pitiful eleven thousand. In fact, our so-called nineteenth century civilization has succeeded in practically exterminating a people who could produce a pearl among womankind, a rare and tender soul, such an one as English history does not give us, and France has produced but one, her own Jeanne D'Arc.

The government of the island has always been by chiefs and chiefesses, no distinction of sex being made in laws of inheritance, the eldest born inheriting the rank and estates and all the authority which the title of chief conveys. Many of the chiefesses appear to have been exceedingly warlike, true Amazons, contending with neighboring chiefs for more authority and extensive possessions. Even as wives of the chiefs, women went to war to help fight the battles of their husbands and clans. It is reported of one of the Pomares who was of a peaceful disposition that in one hotly contested encounter he fled to a neighboring island, leaving his wife Iddeah to face the storm. History says that she was a great warrior and carried the contest to a successful issue for her husband and their possessions. It is recorded of another chief that he was not a warrior and left the active campaigning to his wife. So it will be seen that in the political life of Tahiti sex was not considered. Accident of birth settled the title, and the warlike spirit miade the warrior, whether it resided in chief or chiefess. England took a hand in the island politics at a time when one of the weakest and most unpopular chiefs was warring for the supremacy, and by assisting and upholding his authority prolonged one of the most disastrous wars in the history of Tahiti. The Tahitians detested tyranny and the insolence of a single ruler, and in their tribal system of chiefs had a protection against despotism which the foreigners, by their advocacy of the cause of a special chief, afterwards Pomare I., destroyed.

Before the invasion of the English, the hereditary chief of each district held absolute sway in his own province. Questions of common interest were settled in the island councils by majority vote, and it was in these deliberations that the chiefs of Papara had for generations held the balance of political power. Politically, the change was disastrous. In olden times whenever a single chief became arrogant and threatened to destroy the rest, all the others united to overthrow him and thus re-established the political equilibrium.

Ariitaimai belonged to the Clan of Tevas, of the chiefery of Papara, and the family of Tati. She belonged to the clan which was ruled by Opuhara, the last of the heathen chiefs who went down in the conflict with Pomare II., who with the help of English guns was made absolute monarch of the island. This conflict between Opuhara and the English, because Pomare was only an instrument in their hands to accomplish the conquest of the island, is responsible for the bitter hatred of the genuine natives for the foreigners and the missionaries.

Opuhara was considered the greatest warrior and hero of the Tevas, and his death, the result of a stratagem on the part of Pomare and the English missionaries, is considered by his people a veritable assassination. He fell by a shot fired by a native missionary convert. Tati, one of the under-chiefs of Papara, had been persuaded by the English to approach Opuhara to negotiate with him for submission. But Opuhara turned on him with scorn. "Go, traitor," he said; "shame on you! you, whom I knew as my eldest brother, I know no more; and to-day I call this my spear, 'Ourihere,' brotherless. Beware of it, for if it meet you hereafter, it meets you as a foe. I, Opuhara, have stood as Arii in Mona Temaiti, bowing to no other Gods but those of my fathers. There I shall stand to the end; and never shall I bow to Pomara or to the Gods forced on us by the white-faced man." With Opuhara perished the last hope of the native patriots to preserve a government of chiefs. His dying words were all that was left to his clan of the glory and power of Papara. "My children, fight to the last! It is noon, and I, Opuhara, the _ti_ of Mona Temaiti, am broken asunder!" He fell a martyr to his belief in the heathen gods, and in the ancient inherited rights of his people: a tribal government. His followers have always firmly believed that Opuhara would have won the contest had not the missionaries brought their guns along with their Bibles.

It was this belief that Ariitaimai inherited with the beautiful lands of Papara. She says in her memoirs: "I am told that Opuhara's spear, 'Brotherless Ourihere,' is now in the Museum of the Louvre. Even in those days there were among all his warriors only two who could wield it. If the missionaries have sometimes doubted whether the natives rightly understood the truths and blessings of Christianity, perhaps one reason may be that the Tevas remember how the missionaries fought for Pomare and killed Opuhara."

Marama, the mother of Ariitaimai, was a celebrated chiefess in her own right, the sole heir of Marama, the head chief of Moorea, the nearest island to Tahiti. She was a great heiress, and the last representative of the sacred families of these two islands. She was given in marriage, as a political compromise and at the special request of King Pomare, to Tati's son, the head chief of Tahiti. It was also agreed that all issue of the marriage should become the adopted children of Pomare, according to an ancient Tahitian custom. The family is a great institution in Tahiti and any one whose parents both by birth and adoption had been carried to the family Marae with offerings to the gods, enjoyed a rare social distinction. This Ariitaimai could claim, so from her birth she was looked upon by the islanders as an especially favored and much-to-be-treasured maiden. It may be that this great respect shown towards her by the entire people did much to mold her character. The Tahitian mother has little to say in regard to the training of her first-born, as this one is considered to belong to the family as a whole, and all questions of general interest are settled in family council. And so it was with Ariitaimai. She saw little of her mother, but was in constant touch with the family chiefs from whom, no doubt, she learned lessons in diplomacy, and from listening to their councils she acquired that rare good judgment which fitted her later to be the accepted advisor of her teachers. She mastered both the French and the English languages, and her memoirs show a wonderful knowledge of the literature of both countries, as well as a wide and comprehensive reading of classical authors. While Ariitaimai was growing to womanhood, the pride and special care of the chiefs of Papara, another maiden was receiving equal care and attention on a neighboring island. Aimata of Raiatea, the daughter of Pomare II., was only nine years old when her father died and she was given into the care of the head chief Uata, who was a good and learned man.