Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
of the United States. Moerenhaut’s life, in all of its varied and
unsavoury details, has yet to be written: it would make an entertaining
supplement to the _Police Gazette_. Moerenhaut himself adventured in
letters, and in his _Voyages aux îles du Grand Ocean_ he exposes many
of the corrupt practices that he himself was instrumental in bringing
about. The Admiral and Moerenhaut, in the name of Louis Philippe, drew
up a convention with Pomare “to establish the right of French subjects
to stay in the territory of the Tahitian sovereign.”
During these proceedings, Captain Dumont D’Urville, cruising the
Pacific, arrived at the Marquesas with two corvettes, the _Astrolabe_
and the _Zélé_, hot from the Gambier islands, the seat of Bishop
Rouchouse. At Gambier, when “all were gay and cheerful,” D’Urville
had been enlightened as to the true character of the heretical
missionaries: “oppressors of the poor Tahitians; in short, vampires,
whose cruelties and inquisitorial tortures were as atrocious as their
hypocrisy was disgusting.” Before he left the jovial board, his
indignation was so high that “he felt the honour of his flag” required
that he sail to Tahiti and dispense “exemplary chastisement.” Upon his
arrival at the Marquesas he was surprised to find Du Petit-Thouars,
who had been there, already departed. There was value to his visit,
however, in giving to the pious efforts of Bishop Rouchouse the support
of a few broadsides. But there were other scenes at the Marquesas of
which Bishop Rouchouse, in good conscience, could not have approved.
Melville asserts that while the _Acushnet_ was at the Marquesas, “our
ship was wholly given up to every species of riot and debauchery.”
In the official account of the voyages of Captain Dumont D’Urville
is a more detailed account of a similar surrender. Melville says of
the dances of the women of the Marquesas: “There is an abandoned
voluptuousness in their character that I dare not attempt to describe.”
The French, in their official reports, exhibit a greater courage.
Captain Dumont D’Urville arrived in Tahiti nine days after the
submission of Pomare, and the day following his arrival he accompanied
Admiral Du Petit-Thouars on a visit to the Queen. He had not yet cooled
in his patriotic indignation, so he addressed Pomare severely, and with
gratifying results: “I perceived that Pomare was deeply affected, and
that tears began to fall from her eyes, as she threw them on me with
an evident expression of anger. At the same moment I also perceived
that Captain Du Petit-Thouars endeavoured to diminish the effect of my
words by some little liberties that he was taking with the Queen; such
as pulling gently her hair, and patting her cheeks; he even added that
she was foolish to be so much affected.”
When her French visitors sailed away, Pomare on November 8, 1838,
despatched a letter to her sister sovereign, Victoria, to implore “the
shelter of her wing, the defence of her lion, and the protection of her
flag.” The Tahitians expressed their sense of the favours being forced
upon them by the French by passing a law prohibiting “the propagation
of any religious doctrines, or the celebration of any religious
worship, opposed to that true gospel of old propagated in Tahiti by the
missionaries from Britain; that is, these forty years past.”
This breach of international courtesy brought Captain Laplace on the
_Artémise_ out to Tahiti “to obtain satisfaction from the Lutheran
evangelists who had forced themselves on a simple and docile people.”
As the _Artémise_ was off the coast, on April 22, 1839, she struck on
a coral reef: an accident that resulted in the officers and crew being
lodged on shore for two months. These two months must have given the
brethren bitter fruit for reflection upon the ease with which their
years of unselfish striving could be obliterated. According to the
account of Louis Reybaud of the _Artémise_: “From the first, the most
perfect harmony prevailed between the ship’s company and the natives.
Each of the latter chose his _tayo_,--that is, another self--among the
sailors. Between _tayos_ everything is common. At night, the _tayos_,
French and Tahitian, went together to the common hut. Every sailor has
thus a house, a wife, a complete domestic establishment. As jealousy is
a passion unknown to these islanders, it may be imagined what resources
and pleasures such an arrangement afforded our crew. The natives were
delighted with the character of our people; they had never met with
such gaiety, expansiveness, and kindness in any other foreigners. The
beach presented the aspect of a continual holiday, to the great scandal
of the missionaries. We have seen how the men managed, and what friends
they found. The officers were not less fortunate. The island that
Bougainville called the _New Cytherea_ does not belie its name. When
the evening set in, every tree along the coast shaded an impassioned
pair; and the waters of the river afforded an asylum to a swarm of
copper-coloured nymphs, who came to enjoy themselves with the young
midshipmen. Wherever you walked you might hear the _oui! oui! oui!_ the
word that all the women have learnt with marvellous facility. It would
have been far more difficult to teach them to say _non!_”
Among these relaxations, Captain Laplace found time publicly to declare
to the islanders “how shameful and even dangerous it was to violate
the faith of treaties, and how unjust and barbarous was intolerance.”
Before his sailing, Captain Laplace commanded Pomare to come aboard
the _Artémise_ to sign a treaty guaranteeing no discrimination against
the French. Pomare’s despondency at the beginning of the proceedings
was solaced by champagne and brandy. Casimir Henricy, who accompanied
the _Artémise_ throughout her circumnavigatory voyage, says: “When the
spirits of the party were sufficiently elevated to find everything
good, and while the hands were yet sufficiently steady not to let the
pen drop, the treaty was produced as the crowning act of the festivity.
M. Laplace thought he had gained a great victory over Polynesian
diplomacy; and, certainly, never was a political horizon more bright in
flowers and bottles.”
While Tahiti was the theatre of these religious and political cabals,
more important and decisive measures occupied the mighty minds of
Europe. The captains who had punished and conventionalised Pomare
and her people had made their reports in person to their sovereign
in Paris, and to the ministers of state, who had indicated their
instructions. Honours and titles were awarded to the successful
officers, and on their showing it was resolved that the Marquesas
should first be taken possession of, and then Tahiti. Rear-Admiral Du
Petit-Thouars was commissioned to execute the seizure. On board the
_Reine Blanche_, accompanied by three frigates and three corvettes,
he touched Fatu-Heva, the southernmost of the Marquesas, on April 26,
1842, and culminated his triumphant progress through the group in the
bay of Tyohee at Nukuheva on May 31.
The _Acushnet_ arrived at Nukuheva at a memorable time. “It was in the
summer of 1842 that we arrived at the islands,” says Melville; “the
French had then held possession of them for several weeks.”
CHAPTER X
MAN-EATING EPICURES--THE MARQUESAS
“‘Why, they are cannibals!’ said Toby on one occasion when I
eulogised the tribe. ‘Granted,’ I replied, ‘but a more humane,
gentlemanly and amiable set of epicures do not probably exist in the
Pacific.’”
--HERMAN MELVILLE: _Typee_.
It was sunset when the _Acushnet_ came within sight of the loom of
the mountains of the Marquesas. Innumerable sea-fowls, screaming and
whirling in spiral tracts had, for some days previous, been following
the vessel as harbingers from land. As the ship drew nearer to green
earth, several of man-of-war’s-hawks, with their blood-red bills and
raven plumage, had circled round the ship in diminishing circles
until Melville was able distinctly to mark the strange flashing of
their eyes; and then, as if satisfied by their observations, they
would sail up into the air as if to carry sinister warning on ahead.
Then,--driftwood on the oily swells; and finally had come the glad
announcement from aloft--given with that peculiar prolongation of sound
that a sailor loves--“Land ho!”
After running all night with a light breeze straight for the island,
the _Acushnet_ was in easy distance of the shore by morning. But
as the _Acushnet_ had approached the island from the side opposite
to Tyohee--christened by Captain Porter, Melville remembered,
Massachusetts Bay,--they were obliged to sail some distance along
the shore. Melville was surprised not to find “enamelled and softly
swelling plains, shaded over by delicious groves, and watered by
purling brooks.” Instead he found himself cruising along a bold
rock-bound coast, dashed high against by the beating surf, and broken
here and there into deep inlets that offered sudden glimpses of
blooming valleys, deep glens, waterfalls and waving groves. As the ship
sailed by the projecting and rocky headlands with their short inland
vistas of new and startling beauty, one of the sailors exclaimed to
Melville, pointing with his hand in the direction of the treacherous
valley: “There--there’s Typee. Oh, the bloody cannibals, what a meal
they’d make of us if we were to take it into our heads to land! but
they say they don’t like sailors’ flesh, it’s too salt. I say, matey,
how should you like to be shoved ashore there, eh?” Melville shuddered
at the question, he says, little thinking that within the space of a
few weeks he would actually be a captive in that self-same valley.
Towards noon they swung abreast of their harbour. No description can
do justice to its beauty, Melville tells us. But its beauty was to him
not an immediate discovery. All that he saw was the tri-coloured flag
of France trailing over the stern of six vessels, whose black hulls and
bristling broadsides floated incongruously in that tranquil bay.
The first emissary from the shore to welcome the _Acushnet_ was a
visitor in that interesting state of intoxication when a man is amiable
and helpless: a south-sea vagabond, once a lieutenant in the English
navy, recently appointed pilot to the harbour by the invincible French.
He was aided by some benevolent person out of his whale-boat into
the _Acushnet_, and though utterly unable to stand erect or navigate
his own body, he magnanimously proffered to steer the ship to a good
anchorage: a feat Captain Pease did for himself, despite the amazing
volubility of the visitor in contrary commands.
This renegade from Christendom and humanity was of a type not
infrequently met with in accounts of the South Seas. At Hannamanoo,
Melville came across another such--a white man in the South Sea
girdle, and tattooed on the face, living among a tribe of savages
and apparently settled for life, so perfectly satisfied seemed he
with his circumstances. This man was an Englishman,--Lem Hardy he
called himself,--who had deserted from a trading brig touching at
Hannamanoo for wood and water some ten years previous. Aboard the
_Acushnet_ he told his history. “Thrown upon the world a foundling,
his paternal origin was as much a mystery to him as the genealogy of
Odin; and scorned by everybody, he fled the parish workhouse when a
boy, and launched upon the sea. He had followed it for several years,
a dog before the mast, and now he had thrown it up forever.” He had
gone ashore as a sovereign power, armed with a musket and a bag of
ammunition, and soon became, what he was when Melville found him,
military leader of the tribe, war-god of the entire island, living
under the sacred protection of an express edict of the taboo, his