Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
and ability, was appointed to examine the candidates for the
mission--who applied in great numbers--as to their views, capacity,
and “knowledge in the mystery of godliness.” Thirty missionaries
were chosen: four ministers, six carpenters, two shoemakers, two
bricklayers, two tailors (one of whom, “late of the royal artillery”),
two smiths, two weavers, a surgeon, a hatter, a cotton manufacturer, a
cabinet maker, a harness maker, a tinsmith, a cooper, and a butcher.
There were three women and three children also in the party. On August
10, 1796, on the ship _Duff_, commanded by Captain Wilson, who had
been wonderfully converted to God, this band, in chorus with a hundred
voices, sang “Jesus, at thy command--we launch into the deep” as they
sailed out of Spithead. The singing, it is said, produced “a pleasing
and solemn sensation.” On Sunday, March 5, 1797, after an uneventful
voyage, the _Duff_ dropped anchor at Tahiti. Seventy-four canoes came
out to welcome the strangers and broke the Sabbath by crowding about
the decks, “dancing and capering like frantic persons.” Nor was the
first impression made upon the Missionaries entirely favourable; “their
wild disorderly behaviour, strong smell of cocoa-nut oil, together
with the tricks of the arreoies, lessened the favourable impression we
had formed of them; neither could we see aught of that elegance and
beauty in their women for which they had been so greatly celebrated.”
Conversation with the natives was facilitated by the presence of two
tattooed Swedes--one formerly of the crew of the _Matilda_, the other
left by the _Daedalus_. During sermon and prayer the natives were
quiet and thoughtful, “but when the singing struck up, they seemed
charmed and filled with amazement; sometimes they would talk and
laugh, but a nod of the head brought them to order.” Next day,--for
they arrived on the Sabbath,--some of the missionaries landed and were
presented with the house King Pomare had built for Captain Bligh. This
important matter settled, the chief thought it time to enquire after
entertainment; “first sky-rockets, next the violin and dancing, and
lastly the bagpipe.” Lacking such diversions, the missionaries offered
a few solos on the German flute,--and “it plainly appeared that more
lively music would have pleased them better.”
Domestic arrangements established, to the great diversion of the
natives, the missionaries tried to get some clothes on some of them.
The queen had to rip open the garments, it is true, to get into them;
but one Tanno Manoo, who was given a warm week-day dress, and a showy
morning gown and petticoat for the Sundays, “when dressed, made a very
decent appearance; taking more pains to cover her breasts, and even to
keep her feet from being seen, than most of the ladies of England have
of late done.” The natives were deeply perplexed by the proprieties of
the Missionaries, and especially by what to them seemed the unnatural
chastity of the men.
Since the Missionaries had resolved to distribute their blessings, they
sent a party of brethren to make investigations on the Marquesas. The
first visitors the ship received from the shore were “seven beautiful
young women, swimming quite naked, except for a few green leaves
tied round their middle; nor did our mischievous goats even suffer
them to keep their green leaves, but as they turned to avoid them
they were attacked on each side alternately, and completely stripped
naked.” Such, too, was their “symmetry of features, that as models
for the statuary and painter their equals can seldom be found.” As
they danced about the deck, frequently bursting out into mad fits of
laughter, or talking as fast as their tongues could go, surely they
must have convinced more than one of the meditative brethren of the
total depravity of man. Nor did these shameless savages confine their
excursions to the decks. “It was not a little affecting to see our own
seamen repairing the rigging, attended by a group of the most beautiful
females, who were employed to pass the ball, or carry the tar-bucket,
etc.; and this they did with the greatest assiduity, often besmearing
themselves with the tar in the execution of their office. No ship’s
company, without great restraints from God’s grace, could ever have
resisted such temptations.”
Harris and Crook, two of the brethren, daring temptation, decided to
stay at the Marquesas, and were moved ashore. But before the _Duff_
sailed back to Tahiti, Harris was found on the shore about four
o’clock one morning “in a most pitiable plight, and like one out of
his senses.” It appears that the Marquesan chief Tenae, taking Crook
upon an inland jaunt, had departed, conferring upon Harris all the
privileges of domesticity. Tenae’s wife, sharing her husband’s ideas
of hospitality, was troubled at Harris’ reserve. So, “finding herself
treated with total neglect, became doubtful of his sex,” says the
London Missionary Society in a report dedicated to George the Third,
“and acquainted some of the other females with her suspicion, who
accordingly came in the night, when he slept, and satisfied themselves
concerning that point, but not in such a peaceable way but that they
awoke him. Discovering so many strangers, he was greatly terrified;
and, perceiving what they had been doing, was determined to leave a
place where the people were so abandoned and given up to wickedness;
a cause which should have excited a contrary resolution.” Harris was
forty years old at the time, and by trade a cooper.
Crook, however, remained in the Marquesas for eighteen months, where,
alone, he tried to enlighten and improve the natives. The Marquesas had
a bad reputation among whalemen, and though they had been occasionally
visited by enterprising voyagers--by Fanning, Krusenstern, Porter,
and Finch--they for long remained especially virulent in their native
depravity. It is true that Crook returned after many years to place
among the Marquesans four converted natives from the Society Islands.
In 1834, two missionaries from England, accompanied by Darling from
Tahiti and several converted natives, recommenced the arduous work of
evangelising this ferocious people. During four years the faithful
Stallworthy patiently toiled at his station, when in 1838 a French
frigate landed two Catholic priests in the very and the only spot then
cultivated by an English protestant labourer. These fellow-workers in
Christ competed for the souls of heathens. Though, in 1839, to even
the odds, Stallworthy received a reinforcement of one of his English
brethren, after two years the English missionaries found it impossible
“to maintain usefully their ground against the united influence of
heathen barbarism, popish craft, French power, and French profligacy.”
Thus “ravished from the Protestant charity that had so long watched for
its salvation,” the Marquesans, when discovered by Melville, were in
large part virgin in their barbarism.
At Tahiti, the brethren of the London Missionary Society continued to
work unrestingly, and against incredible discouragement. The natives
were, as Captain Cook discovered, “prodigious expert” as thieves. One
snatcher-up of unconsidered trifles, when by way of punishment chained
to a pillar with a padlock, not only contrived to get away, but to
steal the padlock. Yet, by the representation of the London Missionary
Society, “their honesty to one another seems unimpeachable,” and they
cultivated a Utopian sense of property: “They have no writing or
records, but memory or landmarks. Every man knows his own; and he would
be thought of all characters the basest, who should attempt to infringe
on his neighbour, or claim a foot of land that did not belong to him,
or his adopted friend.” Indeed, despite the reprobation dealt out to
them in tracts compiled for Sunday-school edification (Mrs. F. L.
Mortimer’s _The Night of Toil_ being a typically diverting libel), the
London Missionary Society, in its official reports, was--paradoxically
enough--their most convincing apologist. The natural beauties of their
country were again expatiated upon to the glory of the First Artist.
So prodigal was the natural abundance of Tahiti that the brethren
glorified it by converting it into a temptation. One of the brethren
wrote in his journal: “O Lord, how greatly hast thou honoured me,
that thousands of thy dear children should be praying for _me_, a
worm! Lord, thou hast set me in a heathen land, but a land, if I may
so speak, with milk and honey. O put more grace and gratitude into
my poor cold heart, and grant that I may never with Jeshurun grow
fat and kick.” The natives themselves were untroubled by any such
compunctions. “Their life is without toil,” the brethren reported,
“and every man is at liberty to do, go and act as he pleases, without
the distress of care or apprehension of want: and as their leisure is
great, their sports and amusements are various.” Their personal beauty,
their almost ostentatious cleanliness, their boundless generosity,
were by the London Missionary Society insisted upon. The best of them,
however, lived “in a fearfully promiscuous intercourse,” and emulated
the classical Greeks in infanticide and other reprehensible practices.
Yet do the brethren allow that “in their dances alone is immodesty
permitted; it may be affirmed, they have in many instances more refined
ideas of decency than ourselves. They say that Englishmen are ashamed
of nothing, and that we have led them to public acts of indecency
never before practised among them.” But then, as the London Missionary
Society says in another place: “Their ideas, no doubt, of shame and
delicacy are very different from ours; they are not yet advanced to any
such state of civilisation and refinement.” At their departure from
native custom, however, they were untroubled by contrition. When asked
“what is the true atonement for sin?” they answered, “Hogs and pearls.”
When the pleasant novelty of being exhorted and preached to wore off,
they did not behave impeccably during the devotions of the brethren.
They often cried out “lies” and “nonsense” during the sermon. At other
times they tried to make each other laugh by repeating sentences after
the brethren, or by playing antics, and making faces. Many of the
natives used to lie down and sleep as soon as the sermon began, while
“others were so trifling as to make remarks upon the missionaries’
clothes, or upon their appearance. Thus Satan filled their hearts
with folly, lest they should believe and be saved.” All the best
inducements the brethren could hold out to tempt them into “the divine
life” moved them not. “You talk to us of salvation, and we are dying,”
they said; “we want no other salvation than to be cured of our diseases
and to live here always, and to eat and talk.” So unappreciative were
they of the efforts of the brethren that they explained the presence
of the missionaries in Tahiti as growing out of a sensible desire
to escape from the ugliness and worry and brutality of European
civilisation. As for the lacerated solicitude and strange unselfishness
of the brethren to confer upon each of them a soul with all of its
pestering responsibilities: that, they found totally incomprehensible.
[Illustration: “We are going to church, you see; and Kanoa, my Hawaiian
associate, is blowing a shell to call the people to meeting, as we have
no bell. Kanoa’s wife, with one of her children is just behind us. Be
sure to look at the king, son of the one who was killed, in his long
shirt, and under his umbrella. The queen will come too, for both are
very regular in their attendance; and, what is better still, we hope
they are Christians.
“You may say, perhaps, that some things in this picture look more like
breaking the Sabbath than keeping it; and you are quite right.