Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
character,” according to the observations of the London Missionary
Society, “for sensuality exceeded even the usual standard of Otaheite.”
In the establishment of friendship that ensued, Wallis sent Lieutenant
Furneaux ashore to erect a British pennant, and in defiance of the
Pope, to take formal possession of the island in the name of King
George the Third. Hopelessly unimpressed by the whole transaction,
the natives took down the flag during the night, and for a long time
afterwards the ruling chieftains wore it about their persons as a badge
of royalty. Oberea’s hospitality was requited by a parting gift of some
turkeys, a gander, a goose, and a cat. Oberea’s live stock figures
repeatedly in the later annals of Tahiti.
Early in April, 1768, Tahiti was again visited by Europeans. Louis de
Bougainville was in Tahiti only eight days. But, if Bougainville’s
account be not the bravado of patriotism, during that period his ship’s
company seem to have outdone their English predecessors in sensuality
and open indecency. Several murders were committed more privately. And
the natives, with an eye for the detection of such matters, exposed
among the ship’s crew a woman who had sailed from France disguised
in man’s apparel. Bougainville attached to himself a native youth,
Outooroo, brother of a chieftain; Outooroo accompanied Bougainville
to France. Within a few weeks after sailing from Tahiti, Bougainville
discovered that Outooroo, as well as others aboard, were infected with
venereal disease. Wallis very specifically asserts that his ship’s
company were untouched by disreputable symptoms six months before, and
still longer after their visit at Tahiti. In any event, before the
first year had elapsed after the discovery of Tahiti, its inhabitants
were exhibiting unmistakable signs of their contact with civilisation.
In 1799, the London Missionary Society gave warning to the world: “The
present existence, and the general prevalence of the evil, is but too
obvious; and it concurs with other dreadful effects of sensuality, to
threaten the entire population of this beautiful island, if it is not
seasonably averted by the happy influence of the gospel.” The steady
extinction of the Polynesian races would seem to indicate that this
happy influence has, to date, not been efficacious. When Pope Alexander
the Sixth gave to the indolent Spanish the heathen for inheritance, His
Holiness was being used by a mysterious Providence as the guardian of
heathendom. It was not until he had been for over two centuries and a
half in his tomb, that the heretical and more enterprising English came
to dispel the Egyptian darkness that hung protectingly over most of
the islands of the Pacific, and to expose a competent barbarism to the
devastating aggressions of civilisation.
Everybody knows how in 1769 the Royal Society, discovering that there
would happen a transit of Venus, and that this interesting astronomical
event would be best observed from some place in the Pacific, hit upon
James Cook--Byron, Wallis and Cartaret all being in the Pacific at
the time--master in the Royal Navy, to command the expedition. The
Marquesas were chosen as the place for the observation; but while the
expedition was being fitted out, Captain Wallis returned to England,
bringing news of the discovery of Tahiti. So well known is the story
of Captain Cook that few can boast the distinction of total ignorance
of his three voyages to the Pacific,--the first in command of an
astronomical expedition, the second in search of a Southern Continent,
the third in quest of a Northwest Passage; of his discoveries and
adventures in every conceivable part of the Pacific; of his repeated
returns to Tahiti; of his finally being killed on the island called by
him Owhyhee, murdered despite the fact that he had shown a power of
conciliation granted to no other navigator in these seas. For, a long
time ago, there lived, on the island of Hawaii, Lono the swine-god.
He was jealous of his wife, and killed her. Driven to frenzy by the
act, he went about boxing and wrestling with every man he met, crying,
“I am frantic with my great love.” Then he sailed away for a foreign
land, prophesying at his departure: “I shall return in after times on
an island bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs.” When, after a
year’s absence, Cook returned to Hawaii, he arrived the day after a
great battle, and the victorious natives were absolutely certain that
Cook was the great swine-god, Lono, who long ages ago had departed mad
with love, now, to add lustre to their triumph, returned on an island
bearing cocoa-nut trees, swine, and dogs. This attribution of deity was
hardly complimentary to Cook’s crew. And in time the islanders tired
of their enthusiasm and the expense of entertaining strolling deities.
After sixteen days of prodigal hospitality, the natives began stroking
the sides and patting the bellies of the sailors, telling them, partly
by signs, partly by words, it was time to go. They went. But a week
afterwards the ship returned. There was a quarrel. Among some people a
quarrel leads to a fight. In a fight somebody naturally gets killed.
Or, it may have been,--Walter Besant suggests,--that perhaps it may
have occurred to some native humourist to wonder how a god would look
and behave with a spear stuck right through him. Cook fell into the
water, and spoke no more.
In his life, as in his death, Cook enjoyed all the successes. Boswell
dined with him at Sir John Pringle’s on April 2, 1776, and reported the
glowing event to Dr. Johnson. A snuff-box was carved out of the planks
of one of his vessels, and presented to James Fenimore Cooper. Fanny
Burney records with pride her father’s meeting the famous navigator,
whom she herself met in society and in her own home. Joseph Priestly
contemplated accompanying Cook to the South Seas. An artist--W.
Hodges--was officially appointed to accompany him to perpetuate his
exploits in oil. He read learned papers before the Royal Society, for
one of which the counsel adjudged him the Copley Gold Medal. Six times
was his portrait painted, and once was it seriously proposed that Dr.
Johnson be appointed his official biographer. Not even by Omai, a
native of Tahiti that Captain Furneaux brought to England, was Captain
Cook’s glory eclipsed. And Omai was received by the King, was painted
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was laden with gifts when he was taken back
to Tahiti by Captain Cook on his third voyage. Omai, too, attended
meetings of the Royal Society, and it is to his credit that he behaved
himself fairly well. It was regretted by the Directors of the London
Missionary Society that though “great attention was paid to him by some
of the nobility, it was chiefly directed to his amusement, and tended
rather to augment than to diminish his habitual profligacy.” In 1785-6,
there was repeatedly performed at Covent Garden Theatre a pantomime
named after him. The characters, besides Omai, were Towha, the Guardian
Genius of Omai’s Ancestors; Otoo, Father of Omai; Harlequin, Servant
to Omai. To give a blend of edification to romance, the performance
included, so a surviving play-bill announces, “a Procession exactly
representing the dresses, weapons and manners of the Inhabitants of
Otaheite, New Zealand, Tanna, Marquesas, Friendly, Sandwich and Easter
Islands, and other countries visited by Captain Cook.” In 1789, so
vividly was the tragic end of Captain Cook still mourned, that at the
Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, was presented a spectacular tribute
posted as _The Death of Captain_. It was “a Grand Serious Pantomimic
Ballet, in Three Parts, as now exhibiting in Paris with uncommon
applause, with the Original French Music, New Scenery, Machinery, and
other Decorations.” This performance may have been inspired by an
_Ode on the Death of Captain Cook_ penned by Miss Seward, the Swan of
Lichfield: an ode praised by her fellow-townsman, Dr. Johnson. In 1774
there appeared in London “An Epistle from Oberea, Queen of Otaheite,
to Joseph Banks, Esq., translated by T. Q. Z., Esq., Professor of
the Otaheite Language in Dublin, and of all the Languages of the
Undiscovered Islands in the South Seas, enriched with Historical and
Explanatory Notes,” and so novel and popular was the South Sea manner,
that its author was mistaken for a wit, and his efforts at humour
repeatedly and laboriously imitated. As a corrective to such levity,
there appeared in 1779 an effusion in verse, adorned with vignette
depicting Tahitian women dancing, entitled _The Injured Islanders; or,
The Influence of Art upon the Happiness of Nature_. There is no lack
of evidence to prove that the exploits of Captain Cook brought the
South Seas, and especially Tahiti, into exuberant and irresponsible
popularity. Nor did business enterprise nap during the festivities.
Information which had been received of the great utility of the
bread-fruit, induced the merchants and planters of the British West
Indies to request that means might be used to transplant it thither.
For this purpose a ship was benevolently commissioned by George the
Third: the _Bounty_, commanded by Lieutenant Bligh. The voyage of the
_Bounty_ ended in a horrible tragedy and an intensely interesting
romance. The story of the mutiny of the _Bounty_, and its astonishing
sequels, joined further to vitalise the interest in the South Seas. A
frigate, significantly called the _Pandora_, was sent out from England
to Tahiti to seize the _Bounty_ mutineers. Though the _Pandora_ was
despatched as a messenger of justice, the usual course of festivity,
amusement and debaucheries was uninterrupted during the continuance of
the ship at Tahiti. And the year following, with British doggedness,
Captain Bligh returned to accomplish the purpose of his former
voyage which had been frustrated by mutiny. In 1793, the _Daedalus_,
Vancouver’s storeship, stopped at Tahiti, leaving behind a Swedish
sailor with a taste for savagery. The same year an American whaler, the
_Matilda_, was wrecked off Tahiti, and the crew, delighted at their
good fortune, betrayed no inclination for an immediate departure.
But while the frivolous, the sentimental, and the ungodly were busy
converting Tahitian savagery into a Georgian idyll, the well-starched
Wesleyan conscience crackled in horror at the black unredemption of the
South Sea heathen. “The discoveries made in the great southern seas by
the voyages undertaken at the command of his present majesty, George
the Third,” says a spokesman for the community, “excited wonderful
attention, and brought, as it were, into light a world till then almost
unknown. The perusal of the accounts of these repeated voyages could
not but awaken, in such countries as our own, various speculations,
according as men were differently affected. But when these islands were
found to produce little that would excite the cupidity of ambition, or
answer the speculations of the interested”--well, then it was that the
protestant conscience bestirred itself, and on September 25, 1795,
founded the London Missionary Society. It celebrated its first birthday
by determining to begin work with the islands of the southern ocean,
“as these, for a long time past, had excited peculiar attention. Their
situation of mental ignorance and moral depravity strongly impressed on
our minds the obligation we lay under to endeavour to call them from
darkness into marvellous light. The miseries and diseases which their
intercourse with Europeans had occasioned seemed to upbraid our neglect
of repairing, if possible, these injuries; but above all, we longed to
send to them the everlasting gospel, the first and most distinguished
of blessings which Jehovah has bestowed upon the children of men.”
A select committee of ministers, approved for evangelical principles