The Floating Island (25 page)

“Not at all! The bamboula is
plainly suggested!” said Pinchinat, indulging in the characteristic hip motions
of this negro dance.

The
island of Tahiti was destined to become a stopping place for Floating Island.
Every year, before pursuing its route towards the tropic of Capricorn, its
inhabitants would sojourn in the neighbourhood of Papaete. Received with
sympathy by the French authorities as well as by the natives, they showed their
gratitude by opening wide their gates, or rather their ports. Soldiers and
civilians crowded on to the island, exploring the country, the park, the
avenues, and probably no incident would happen to alter this satisfactory state
of affairs. At the departure, it is true, the Governor’s police would have to
assure themselves that the population had not been fraudulently increased by
the intrusion of a few Tahitians, not authorized to take up their abode on his
floating domain.

It followed, that by reciprocity,
every latitude was given to the Milliardites to visit the islands of the group,
when Commodore Simcoe called at one or the other of them.

In view of the stay here, a few
rich families had rented villas in the environs of Papaete, and secured them in
advance by telegraph. They intended to take up their quarters there, as the
Parisians do in the neighbourhood of Paris, with their servants and horses, so
as to live the life of large landowners, as tourists, excursionists, sportsmen
even although they had little taste for sport. In short, they would have a
little country life without having anything to fear from the salubrious
climate, the temperature of which ranges between thirty and forty degrees
centigrade between April and December the other months of the year constituting
the winter in the southern hemisphere.

Among the notables who left their
mansions on the island for their country houses ashore were the Tankerdons and
the Coverleys. Mr. and Mrs. Tankerdon, their sons and their daughters, departed
next day for a picturesque chalet on the heights of Tatao Point. Mr. and Mrs.
Coverley, Miss Diana and her sisters left their palace in Fifteenth Avenue for
a delightful villa, hidden beneath the big trees of Venus Point. Between these
habitations there was a distance of several miles, which Walter Tankerdon
perhaps thought a little too long. But it was not in his power to bring these
two points of the Tahitian coast any nearer. Besides, there were carriage
roads, conveniently arranged to place them in direct communication with Papaete.

Frascolin remarked to Calistus
Munbar that if they started in the morning, the two families could not be
present at the visit of the commandant to the Governor.

“Well, so much the better!”  replied
the superintendent, his eyes brightening with diplomatic acuteness. “That will
avoid any conflict between them. If the representative of France paid his first
visit to the Coverleys, what would the Tankerdons say, and if he went to the
Tankerdons, what would the Coverleys say? Cyrus Bikerstaff must be glad of
their departure.”

“Is there no reason for hoping
that the rivalry of these families will end?” asked Frascolin.

“Who knows?” replied Calistus
Munbar.

“It may perhaps depend on the
amiable Walter and the charming Diana.”

“Up to the present, however,”
observed Yvernès, “it does not seem that this heir and this heiress
—
”

“Good! good!” replied the
superintendent. “It wants an opportunity, and if chance does not bring it
about, we may have to take the place of chance
—
for
the good of our beloved island.”

And Calistus Munbar performed a
pirouette on his heels, which would have been applauded by Athanase Dorémus,
and would not have been disavowed by a marquis in the days of Louis Quatorze.

In the afternoon of the 20th of
October, the commander and his staff landed at Starboard Harbour. They were
received by the Governor with the honours due to their rank. There was a salute
from both batteries. Cars decorated with the French and Milliardite colours
took the procession to the capital, where the rooms at the town hall were
prepared for this interview. On the road there was a flattering reception from
the population, and before the steps of the municipal palace an exchange of
official speeches of regulation length.

Then came a visit to the temple,
the cathedral, the observatory, the two electric works, the two harbours, the
park, and finally a circular trip on the trams round the coast. On the return a
luncheon was served in the grand hall of the casino. It was six o’clock when
the commandant and his staff embarked for Papaete amid the thunders of the
artillery of Standard Island, taking away with him a pleasing remembrance of
this reception.

The next morning, the 21st of
October, the four Parisians landed at Papaete. They had invited no one to
accompany them, not even the professor of deportment, whose legs were not
suited for lengthy peregrinations. They were free as the air
—
like schoolboys on
a holiday, happy to have under foot a real soil of rocks and vegetable mould.

In the first place they must
visit Papaete. The capital of the archipelago is incontestably a pretty town.
The quartette took a real pleasure in wandering about under the lovely trees
which shaded the houses on the beach, and the offices and trading
establishments near the harbour. Then passing up one of the streets abutting on
the quay, where a railway on the American system was working, our artistes
ventured into the interior of the city.

There the streets are wide, as
well planned with rule and square as the avenues of Milliard City, among
gardens of verdure and freshness. Even at this early hour there was a constant
passing and re-passing of Europeans and natives, and this animation, which
would be greater after eight o’clock in the evening, would last all through the
night. You understand that the tropical nights, and particularly Tahitian
nights, are not made to spend in bed, although the beds of Papaete are composed
of a network of cocoa fibre, a palliasse of banana leaves, and a mattress of
tufts of the silk cotton tree, to say nothing of the net protecting the sleeper
against the irritating attacks of mosquitoes.

As to the houses, it is easy to
distinguish those which are European from those which are Tahitian. The former,
built almost entirely of wood, are raised a few feet on blocks of masonry, and
leave nothing to be desired in the way of comfort, The latter, of which there
are not many in the town, scattered here and there under the shade of the
trees, are made of jointed bamboos covered with matting, which renders them
clean, airy and agreeable.

But the natives?

“The natives!” said Frascolin to
his comrades. “There are no more here than at the Sandwich Islands; we shall
not find those gallant savages, who, before the conquest, dined on a human
cutlet, and reserved for their sovereign the eyes of a vanquished warrior
roasted according to the recipe of Tahitian cookery!”

“Ah, is that it?” asked Pinchinat.
“Then there are no more cannibals in Oceania. What! we shall have voyaged
thousands of miles without meeting one of them!”

“Patience!” remarked the
violoncellist, beating the air with his right hand like Rodin in the Mysteries
of Paris; “we may find one, if it is only to gratify your foolish curiosity.”

The Tahitians are of Malay
origin, very probably, and of the race known as Maori. Raiatea, the Holy
Island, was the cradle of their Kings
—
a
charming cradle washed by the limpid waters of the Pacific in the Windward
group.

Before the arrival of the
missionaries, Tahitian society comprised three classes: those of the princes,
privileged persons who were recognized as possessing the gift of performing
miracles; chiefs, or owners of the soil, of little consideration, and reduced
to servitude by the princes; the common people, possessing nothing, or when
they did possess it, having nothing beyond a life interest in the land.

All this has been changed since
the conquest, and even before, under the influence of the English and Catholic
missionaries. But that which has not changed is the intelligence of the
natives, their lively speech, their cheerful disposition, their unfailing
courage, their physical beauty. The Parisians could not help admiring this in
the town and in the country.

“What fine men!” said one.

“And what fine girls!”  said
another.

Men of a stature above the
average, their skin copper-coloured as if impregnated with the ardour of their
blood, their proportions as admirable as those of antique statues, their faces
gentle and prepossessing. These Maories are truly superb, with their large
bright eyes, their rather thick but well-cut lips. Their tattooing for war
purposes is disappearing with the occasions which formerly rendered it
necessary.

The more wealthy natives clothe
themselves in European fashion, and yet they look well with shirts cut to the
figure, vest of pale rose stuff, trousers falling over the boots. But these did
not attract the attention of the quartette. No! To the trousers of modern cut,
our tourists preferred the pareo of cotton, coloured and striped, draped from
the belt to the ankle, and in place of the high hat, and even the Panama hat,
the headdress common to both sexes, the hei, composed of leaves and flowers.

The women are still the poetic and
graceful Otaheitans of Bougainville. The white petals of the tiara, a sort of
gardenia, mingle with the black mats unrolled on their shoulders their heads
covered with the light hat made of the epidermis of a cocoanut, but of which
the sweet name of revareva “seems to come from reverie,” as Yvernès said. Add
to the charm of this costume, with its colours like those of a kaleidoscope
modifying at every movement, the gracefulness of the walk, the freedom of the
attitudes, the sweetness of the smile, the penetration of the look, the
harmonious sonorousness of the voice, and you will understand why, as soon as
one of our artistes exclaimed, “What fine men!” the others should have answered
in chorus,
—

“And what fine girls!”

When the Creator had fashioned
such marvels of beauty, would it have been possible for Him not to have given
them a frame worthy of them? And what could be imagined more delightful than
the Tahitian landscapes, in which the vegetation is so luxuriant under the
influence of the running streams and abundant dews of the night?

During their excursions across
this island, and in the neighbourhood of Papaete, the four Parisians did not
cease to admire this world of vegetable wonders. Leaving the borders of the
sea, which are more suited to cultivation, where the forests are replaced by
plantations of lemon trees, orange trees, arrowroot, sugar-cane, coffee-plants,
cotton trees, fields of yams, manioc, indigo, sorghum, and tobacco, they
ventured under the masses of trees in the interior up to the foot of the
mountains, whose summits rose above the dome of foliage. Everywhere were
elegant cocoanut trees of magnificent growth, miros or rosewood trees,
casuarinas or ironwood trees, tiairi or bancoulias, puraus, tamanas, ahis or
santals, guava trees, mango trees, taccas, whose roots are edible, and also the
superb taro, the precious breadfruit tree, high in the stem, slender and white,
with large brownish-green leaves, amid which are groups of large fruits, with
chiselled bark, and of which the white pulp forms the principal food of the
natives.

The tree which with the cocoanut
is the commonest is the guava tree, which grows all the way up the mountains, and
whose name in the Tahitian tongue is tuava. It grows in thick forests, while
the puraus form gloomy thickets, difficult to get through, when you are
imprudent enough to venture among them.

There were no dangerous animals.
The only native quadruped is a sort of pig. As to the horses and cattle, they
have been imported into the island, where they prosper like the sheep and
goats. The fauna is much less rich than the flora, even with the birds
included. There are pigeons and swallows as at the Sandwich Islands. There are
no reptiles. There are centipedes and scorpions. And for insects there are
wasps and mosquitoes.

The products of Tahiti are mainly
cotton and sugarcane, the cultivation of which is largely developed, to the
detriment of tobacco and coffee; besides these there are cocoanut oil,
arrowroot, oranges, nacre and pearls. This is, however, enough for an important
trade with America, Australia, and New Zealand, with China in Asia, with France
and England in Europe, to a value of three million two hundred thousand francs
of imports, counterbalanced by four millions and a half of exports.

The excursions of the quartette
extended to the peninsula of Tabaratu. A visit to Fort Phaeton introduced them
to a detachment of marine infantry, who were delighted to welcome their
compatriots.

At an inn near the harbour, kept
by a colonist, Frascolin stood treat. To the natives of the neighbourhood, to
the mutoi of the district, there were glasses round of French wine, which the
innkeeper did not forget to charge for. In return the locals offered their
entertainers some of the products of the country, such as the preparation from
a species of banana known as fei, of beautiful yellow colour, yams prepared in
a succulent fashion, maiore, which is the breadfruit cooked to bursting in a
hole full of hot stones, and finally a confection sourish in flavour, made from
grated cocoa nut, and which, under the name of taiero, is kept in bamboo twigs.

This luncheon was very jolly. The
party smoked many hundreds of cigarettes made of tobacco leaf dried at the
fire, and rolled within a pandanus leaf. Only, instead of imitating the
Tahitian men and women, who pass them from mouth to mouth after taking a few
whiffs, the Frenchmen preferred to smoke them in French fashion. And when the
mutoi offered his, Pinchinat thanked him with a “mea maitai,” that is to say ”very
well,” with such a grotesque intonation that it put the whole crowd into good
humour.