The Pacific Triangle Part 2

They are very successful in New Zealand among the Maories. Like a great current of warm water in the sea, the Polynesian races have run from Hawaii to Samoa, the Marquesas, Tahiti, and Maoriland. How they got there is still part of conjecture.

To most of us, the South Seas mean simply cannibals and naked girls.

Dark skins and giant bodies are synonymous with Polynesians. The grouping of these peoples into Poly-Mela-Micronesian has some scientific meaning which, if not esoteric and awe-inspiring, slips by our consciousness as altogether too highbrow to deserve consideration. Or we are satisfied with pictures such as Melville and O'Brien have given us, pictures that as long as the world is young will thrill us as do those of Kinglake and Marco Polo. But, those of us who have gone beyond our boyhood rhymes of "Wild man from Borneo just come to town" and have been White Shadows ourselves, are keenly interested in the whence and the why of these people. Can it be that Darwin was right? Have we approached the spot whereon man made his first appearance on the earth? Or are others right whose soundings divulge a hidden course that gives these people a birthplace ten thousand miles away, in central Asia? Is it that all the people of the world were first made men on land that is now beneath the waters of the Pacific,--men who, because of geological changes, fell back across Asia, leaving scattered remnants in the numerous island peaks now standing alone in that sun-baked world? "There is ground for the belief," says Griffith Taylor,[1] "that the Pacific Ocean was smaller in the Pleistocene period, being reduced by a belt of land varying in width from 100 to 700 miles." Or are the further calculations more accurate,--that there have been constant migrations of people from Asia?

[1] Griffith Taylor: _Geographical Review_, January, 1912, p. 61.

Slowly scientists are groping their way through legend. No one who has been among the South Sea people, and those of the western Pacific islands, can help being impressed with certain remarkable likenesses between them and European people. Present-day anthropologists are at variance with the old evolutionary school which believed in "a general, uniform evolution of culture in which all parts of mankind partic.i.p.ated." "At present," according to Franz Boas, "at least among certain groups of investigators in England and also in Germany, ethnological research is based on the concept of migration and dissemination rather than upon that of evolution." In connection with Polynesia and the Pacific peoples, it seems to be fairly well known that they drifted from island to island in giant canoes. They had no sails nor compa.s.s, but, guided by stars and directed by the will of the winds, they roved the high seas and landed wherever the sh.o.r.es were hospitable.

During ages when Europe dreaded the sea and hugged the land, when the European universe consisted of a flat table-like earth and a dome-like heaven of stars,--even before the vikings ventured on their wild marauding excursions, the Polynesians made of the length and breadth of the Pacific a highway for their canoes. "Somewhat before this (450 A. D.) one bold Polynesian had reached polar ice in his huge war canoe."[1] Our Amerindians dared the swiftest rapids in their frail bark canoes; but what was that compared with the courage and love of freedom which sent this lone Polynesian out upon the endless waters of the Pacific? Some day a poet will give him his deserving place among the great heroes.

[1] Griffith Taylor: _Geographical Review_, January, 1912, p. 61.

Dr. Macmillan Brown tells us that the Easter Islands were once the center of a great Pacific empire. Here men came from far and wide to pay tribute to one ruling monarch. He builded himself a Venice amid the coral reefs, with ca.n.a.ls walled in by thirty feet of stone. Fear of the control over the winds which this monarch was said to possess, and superst.i.tious dread of his ire brought the va.s.sal islanders to him with their choicest possessions, though he had no military means of compelling respect. This monarch, like the Pharaohs who built the pyramids, must have had thousands of laborers to have been able to cut, shape, and build the giant platforms of stone or the great ca.n.a.ls which are referred to as the Venice of the Pacific. It must have taken no little engineering skill so to adjust them to one another as to require no mortar to keep them together. In the Caroline Islands, now under j.a.panese mandate, there still stand remains of stone buildings of a forgotten day's requirements.

These relics of unknown days make it reasonably certain that after having been "shot" out from the mainland, the early people of the Pacific reached all the way across to the island of Savaii, in the Samoan group, and later as far as Tahiti. Why they did not go on to the Americas is hard to say. Perhaps the virginity of the islands and the congenial climate offered these artless savages all they desired. Beyond were cold and drudgery. Here, though labor and war were not wanting, still there was balmy weather. Probably they were the tail-end of the great migration of the Wurm ice age. More venturesome than most, and having arrived at lands roomy enough for their small numbers, they must have called themselves blessed in that much good luck and decided to take no further chances with the generosity of the G.o.ds.

Linguistic and ethnological data link the Polynesians with the Koreans, j.a.panese, Formosans, Indonesians, and Javanese. Legends and genealogies show that about the dawn of our era the early Polynesians were among the Malay Islands. By 450 A. D. they had reached Samoa and by 850 A. D., Tahiti.... In 1175 A. D. the primitive Maoriori were driven out of New Zealand to the Chatham Isles. No doubt New Zealand was first reached several hundred years before this. Tahiti seems to have been a center of dispersal, as Percy Smith has pointed out in his interesting book "Hawaiki." We must, however, remember that Melanesians preceded the Polynesians to many of these islands at a much earlier date.[1]

[1] Griffith Taylor: _Geographical Review,_ January, 1921.

However, mutation is the law of life. Even these small groups split into smaller factions. Some went south to the islands of the Antipodes and called themselves Maories; others went north of the equator and called themselves Hawaiians. The physical distribution of all the races in the Pacific, rooting, as we have seen, in Asia, represents a virile plant the stem of which runs eastward and is known as Micronesia and Melanesia, with the flowers, in all their diversified loveliness, Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Maoriland.

What made them what they are? How is it that being, as it seems, people of extraction similar to that of Europeans, they have remained in such a state of arrested development? How is it that they became cannibals, eaters of men's flesh? Again the answer is not far to seek. Just like the Europeans, they followed the line of least resistance, having as yet developed no artificial or brain-designed weapons against the stress of nature. Europeans, in time of great famine, have not themselves been above cannibalism. In our Southern States we have isolated mountaineers to show us what men can revert to. And in northern China to-day, essentially Buddhist and non-flesh-eating, cannibalism was reported during the famine last year.

But Europe had what Polynesia did not have. Driven by the force of necessity out of continental Asia, Polynesia hid itself away in the cracks and crannies of the Pacific; Europeans spread over a small continent and broke up into innumerable warring and learning tribes.

Backward and forward along peninsular Europe, men communicated to one another their emotional and objective experiences. The result has been a culture amazing only in its diversity,--amazing because, with contact and interchange of racial experiences, the coursing and recoursing of the same blood, stirred and dissolved, it is amazing that such diversity should persist.

But in Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia,--in all the distant land-specks of the Pacific,--contact was impossible in the larger sense. Though canoes did slide into strange harbors or drift or row in and about the atolls, they afforded at most romantic stimuli to these isolated groups.

Infusion of culture was very difficult. At most, these causal meetings added to or confused the stories of their origin. And in a little time the different island groups forgot their beginnings.

Presently, the pressure upon their small areas with the limited food supply began to make itself felt. Some method had to be devised for the limitation of population and to keep in food what few numbers there were. There seem to have been no indigenous animals anywhere in the islands. Darwin found only a mouse, and of this he was uncertain as to whether it really was indigenous. Except for a few birds, and the giant Moa which roamed the islands of New Zealand, animal life was everywhere insufficient to the needs of so vital a people as were these. But much less is heard to-day of the cannibalism said to have run rampant among them. It is even disputed. The fruits of the tropics, doubtless rich in vitamines, are peculiarly suited to the sustenance of so spirited a race.

3

The Polynesians found in the various islands they approached, during that slow, age-long migration eastward, tribes and islanders inferior to themselves. So did the Europeans in their movement westward. The primitive Caucasians remained and mixed slightly along the way, leaving here and there traces of their contact. And their ancestors in Asia forgot their exiled offspring.

With the landing of Cook at Tahiti, at Poverty Bay, at Hawaii, the counter invasion of the Pacific began. For over a hundred years now the European has been injecting his culture, his vices, his iron exact.i.tude into the so-called primitive races. These hundred years make the second phase of civilization in the Pacific. It might have been the last. It might have meant the reunion of Caucasic peoples, their blending and their amalgamation, and the world would have lived happily ever after.

But the eternal triangle plays its part in politics no less than in love, and the third period, the period of rivalry and jealousy, of suspicion and scandal, of still-born accomplishment in many fields has set in. And tragedy, which men love because it is closest to truth, is on the stage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EVEN FIJIANS ARE LOATH TO FORGET THE ARTS OF THEIR FOREFATHERS F. W. Caine, Photo]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN GIANT CANOES HELIOLITHIC IMMIGRANTS ROAMED THE SOUTH SEAS Photo, H. Winkelmann]

The third period dates largely from the discovery and the awakening of j.a.pan. It is the blocking of the European invasion of the Pacific, and the inst.i.tution of a counter move,--that of the expansion of Asia into the Pacific,--which will be treated in the last section of this book.

To-day, Polynesia is barely holding its own. Its sons have studied "abroad," they have been in our schools and universities, they have fought in "our" war. Rapidly they are putting aside the uncultured simplicity of adolescence. For long they treasured drifts of iron-girded flotsam which the waves in their impartiality cast upon their sh.o.r.es; to-day iron is supplanting thatch, and a belated iron age is reviving their imaginations, just as iron guns and leaden bullets shattered them a century ago. In the light of their astonishment, _Rip Van Winkle_ is a crude conception; Wells has had to revise and enlarge "When the Sleeper Wakes" into "The Outline of History." No man knows what is pregnant in the Pacific; nor will the next nine eons reveal the possibilities.

Chapter III

OUR FRONTIER IN THE PACIFIC

1

Honolulu marks our frontier in the Pacific. Honolulu has been conquered.

If the conquest is that of love, then the offspring will be lovely; if of mere force, or intrigue, then Heaven help Honolulu! As far as outward signs go, we are in a city American in most details. The numerous trolleys, the modern buildings, the motor-cars, the undaunted Western efficiency which no people is able to withstand has gripped Hawaii in an iron grip. True that the foreign (that is, Hawaiian, Chinese, j.a.panese, Portuguese) districts are steeped in squalor, but this is old Honolulu.

The new is a little Los Angeles with all its soullessness, and it has taken all the illusions of modern civilization to accomplish it. The first illusion was that the natives would be better off as Americans than as Hawaiians; the second, that Hawaiians were lazy and j.a.panese and Chinese were necessary; the third, that cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness. How have these things worked out? The Hawaiians are in the ever-receding minority, the j.a.panese in the unhappy majority, and enjoyment of cleanliness has made most men forget that it is only _next_ to something else. If the invited are coming to Honolulu expecting money-grabbers to turn to poetry and petty politicians to philosophy, they had better save their fares. If readers of magazines expect to find a melting-pot in which all the ingredients are dancing about with their arms round one another's neck, they had better remain at home.

For the first and foremost effect of the tropics is to individualize things. In colder climes people huddle together to conserve warmth; here they give one another plenty of s.p.a.ce. Virtually one of the first things the new-comer does is to name and separate things from the ma.s.s. Every little thing has its personality. Plants grow in profusion, but each opens out to its utmost. One is much more inclined to ask what this flower is called in Honolulu than in America, for each stands out, and one stands out to each. Honolulu exudes moisture and fragrance, stirring the pa.s.sions as does the scent of a clean woman. It limbers up one's reasoning faculties and arouses one's curiosity.

On the street every Chinese and every j.a.panese comes in for his share of attention. One begins to single out types as it has never occurred to one to do in New York. In Honolulu all intermingle, flower in a sort of unity, but in the very ma.s.s they retain their natural variations. The white people are ordinarily good, they have mastered the technique of life sufficiently and play tolerably well to an uncritical audience.

While the Hawaiian policeman in charge of the traffic stands out in bold relief because the dignity and importance of his position have stiffened the easy tendencies of his race,--he is self-conscious. Monarch of Confusion, arrayed in uniform, tall and with the manner of one always looking from beneath heavy eyebrows, it is said that he causes as much trouble as he allays. But that is mere prejudice. Who would dare ignore his arm and hand as he directs the pa.s.sing vehicle? He fascinates. He commands. His austere silence is awe-inspiring. When he permits a driver to pa.s.s, there is a touch of the contemptuous in that relinquishment.

Nor dare the driver turn the corner till, in like manner, this human indicator points the direction for him. The finger follows now almost mockingly, until another car demands its attention, and it becomes threatening again.

One hears of the all-inclusive South Seas as though it were something totally without variation. The average tourist and scribe soon acquires the South-Sea style. But the more discriminating know full well that the expressions which describe one of the South Sea islands fall flat when applied to another. "Liquid suns.h.i.+ne" is a term peculiarly Hawaiian. It would never apply to Fiji, for instance, for there the words "atmospheric secretion" are more accurate. Hence, it is more than mere political chance that has made Hawaii so utterly different from the Philippines and the litter of South Seas.

Honolulu is essentially an American city. The hundreds of motor-cars that dash in and about the streets do so just as they would in "sunny California." The shops that attract the Americans are just like any in America,--clean, attractive, with their best foot forward. So meticulous, so spotless, so untouchable are they that the soul of the seeker nearly sickens for want of spice and flavor. To have to live on Honolulu's Main Street would be like drinking boiled water. One imagines that when the white men came thither, finding disease and uncleanliness rampant, they determined that if they were to have nothing else they would have things clean. All newcomers to Oriental and primitive countries cling to that phase of civilization with something akin to terror. Generally they get used to the dirt. They have not done so in Honolulu. It may be that mere distance has something to do with the different results, but certain it is that Manila, under American control just as is Honolulu, has none of these prim, not primitive, drawbacks.

Twenty years of American rule have done little really to Americanize Manila, while they have utterly metamorphosed Honolulu.

The man-made machine has now outlived the vituperation of idealists. The man-made machine is running, and even the most romantic enjoys life the better for it. Clean hotels, swimming-pools within-doors, motor-cars that bring nature to man with the least loss of time and cost of fatigue,--these are things which only a fool would despise. But one longs for some show of the human touch, none the less, and cities that are built by machine processes are, despite all their virtues, not attractive. At least, they are not different enough from any other city in the modern world to justify a week's journey for the seeing. One hears that steamers and trains and airplanes are killing romance. That is so, but not because they in themselves conduce to satiety, but because they destroy indigenous creations and subst.i.tute importations and iron exact.i.tude. Within the next few generations there will, indeed, be a South Seas, indistinguishable and without variety. Honolulu is an example. But Honolulu is not Hawaii! It is only a bit of decoration. So we shall leave this phase of Hawaii for consideration at a time when, having seen the things native to the Pacific, we reflect upon the meaning and purport of things alien.

In Hawaii, we are told,--and without exaggeration,--one can stand in the full suns.h.i.+ne and watch the rain across the street. So, too, can one enjoy some of the material blessings of modern life, yet be within touch of nature incomparably exquisite.

2

He was only a street-car conductor. Every day he journeyed from the heart of Honolulu, like a little blood corpuscle, through arteries of trade hardened by over-feeding, in a jerking, rocking old trolley car, to the very edge of Manoa Valley. His way lay along the fan-shaped plane behind the sea, and was lined with semi-palatial residences and Oahu College. Palms swayed in the breeze, and the night-blooming cereus slept in the glittering sunlight upon the stone walls. He was only a street-car conductor, furnished with his three spare meals a day and his bed, but he fed along the way on sweets that no street-car conductor in any other place in the world has by way of compensation. He was carved with wrinkles and his frail frame bent slightly forward, but his heart was young within him, and he acted like a plutocrat whose hobby was gardening and whose gardens were rich with the finest flowers on earth.

The delight he took in the open country, barely the edge of which he reached so many times a day, was pathetic. When I asked him to let me off where I could wander on the open road, he beamed with pleasure and delight, and told me where I should have to go really to reach the wild.

There may be other places in the world as beautiful and even more so, but no place ever had such a street-car conductor to recommend it. And no recommendation was ever more poetic and inspiring than this,--not even that of the Promotion Committee of Honolulu.

And, strange to say, I have never been guided more honestly and more truthfully than when that street-car conductor advised me to go to Manoa Valley. I lived an eternity of joy in the few hours I spent there. I knew that not many miles beyond I should again be blocked by the sea. I could not see it because of the hills which spend three hundred and sixty-five days of every year dressing themselves in their very best and posing before the mirror of the sky. Not more than one or two natives pa.s.sed me, nor did any other living creature appear. I could only romance with myself, refusing to be fooled by the talk about fair maidens with leis round their necks. I was certain that back home there were maidens whose beauty could not be equaled here; whose soft, white skins and shapely forms were never excelled by tropical loveliness. But I was just as certain that there was nothing at home that compared to nature as it is lavished upon man here in Hawaii, and especially in Manoa Valley.

We all have our compensations, and I have even shown preference for a return to the joys of genuine human beauty which the maker of worlds gave to America, and to leave to the mid-Pacific verdure and alt.i.tudes whose combination stirs my mind with pa.s.sionate adoration to this very day. Still, I shall ever be grateful to that wizened street-car conductor for having suggested that I visit his little valley, which he himself can enter only after paying a penalty of sixteen journeys between Heaven and Honolulu every day, carrying the money-makers backward and forward. Perhaps he does not regard it as a penalty.

Perhaps he feels himself fully compensated if one or two of his human parcels asks him where may be found the Open Road.

3

Sullen and less concerned with emotional or spiritual values was the driver of the motor-bus whom we exhumed one day from the heart of Honolulu's "foreign" section. He evidently regarded nature on his route as too great a strain on his brakes, though he, too, must have felt that compensation was meted out to him manifold. For few people come to Hawaii and leave without contributing some small share to his support, as he is the shuttle between Honolulu and Kaneohe, and carries the thread of sheer joy through the eye of that wondrous needle, the Pali.

At the Pali one senses the youth and vigor of our earth. Its peak, piercing the sky, seems on the point of emerging from the sea. It has raised its head above the waters and stands with an air of contempt for loneliness, wrapped in mist, defying the winds. The world seems to fall away from it. It has triumphed. There is none of that withdrawing dignity of Fujiyama, the great man who looks on. The Pali imposes itself upon your consciousness with spectacular gusto, like the villain stamping his way into the very center of the stage and gazing roundabout over a protruding chin.

The palm-trees bow solemnly before changeless winds, in the direction of Honolulu, which lies like an open fan at the foot of the valley near the sea. Color is in action everywhere,--spots of metallic green, of volcanic red, filtered through a screen of marine gray. Honolulu lies below to the rear; Kaneohe, beyond vast fields of pineapple, before us; the sea, wide, open, limitless except for the reaches of the heavens, binding all. And then there is an upward, circular motion,--that of the rising mists drawn by the burning rays of the sun pressing landward and das.h.i.+ng themselves into the valley and falling in sheets of rain upon the earth. Wedged into a gully, as though caught and unable to break away, was a heavy cloud,--but it was being drained of every drop of moisture as a traveler held up by a gang of highway-men.

This circular motion is found not only in inanimate nature. Once, at least, it has whirled the Hawaiians into tragedy. Here, history tells us, Kamehameha I (the fifth from the last of Hawaii's kings) hurled an army of native Oahu islanders over this bluff, back into the source of their being. Without quarter he pressed them on, over this pa.s.s; while they, unwilling to yield to capture, chose gladly to dash themselves into the valley below. One is impressed by the striking interplay of emotion with sheer nature. The controlling element which directs both man and mountain seems the same. States and stars alike emerge, crash, and crumble.