Samoa and its Story/3
THE ISLANDS AND THE PEOPLE
The Samoan group includes ten inhabited islands, of which Savaii and Upolu are the largest, and stretches east and west for two hundred miles. The islands lie between the parallels of 13° and 15° South latitude and 168° and 173° West longitude. Apia is about 1650 miles N.N.E. from Auckland, and a little over 2400 miles N.E. from Sydney. San Francisco is 4200 miles away. The group forms a slightly curved chain, with Tutuila, the American island, forming the most southerly part of the curve. Being within about 850 miles of the Equator the climate is hot, and the mountains make it moist; a land of blazing sunshine, but a land of frequent downpours and tropic squalls. Often oppressive in the summer, it is almost as hot in the season that is winter in New Zealand. The fine, dry season is from April to September; the wet season is from October to March, and hurricanes are liable to occur any time between the beginning of December and the end of March. The temperature does not vary much; Apia’s mean annual temperature is 78 degrees Fahrenheit. It is hotter than either Fiji or Tonga; but like those groups it is an extremely healthy place, and newcomers from colder climes need not fear the heat so long as they observe the ordinary rules of hygienic living, and restrict their consumption of animal food. Malaria and other perils of the western Pacific Islands do not affect Samoan residents. Mosquitoes are a pest, except on breezy points where the trade winds have free passage. As in the New Zealand bush, there are no snakes, and one may rest securely in the heart of the forest, but he will do wisely not to forget his mosquito net. Flies are a nuisance, and the papalangi soon falls into the habit of carrying a fan, or one of the fibre fly-whisks which every native uses.
Josiah Martin, photo
Mat making, Samoa
The islands are really huge, forested mountain ranges, with areas of level land of the richest quality lying at the bases of the hills. Everywhere the bush and the fruit-plantation; the coconut palm groves along the coast and inland furring the ranges, the wild timber, large and small, all twisted and twined with shrubs and lianes, in a true tropical profusion of jungly intricacy. Every kind of fruit grows here,—coconuts, bananas, breadfruit, grenadillas, “mummy-apples,” oranges, mangoes, custard apples, limes, pineapples; the sweet potato, the taro and the yam are raised in great quantities, and vegetables from temperate climes are successfully cultivated. Horses and cattle thrive, and the pig is as familiar a creature here as he is in a Maori village.
In the dense moist bush there are some great trees, such as the huge spreading banyan. Robert Louis Stevenson thus describes one:—“We came but a little further, and found in the borders of the bush a banyan. It must have been 150 feet in height; the trunk and its acolytes occupied a great space; above that, in the peaks of the branches, quite a forest of ferns and orchids were set; and over all again the huge spread of the boughs rose against the bright west and sent their shadow miles to the eastward. I have not often seen anything more satisfying than this vast vegetable.”
Upolu Island is about forty miles in length, with a width of ten or twelve miles; it runs east and west, and the harbour of Apia is on its northern side. All round the island runs a coral reef, interrupted every few miles by channels, some of them large enough to admit ships: and inside this barrier reef most of the boat-voyaging is done from bay to bay. Off the eastern end is a small woody islet Nuulua, which La Pérouse called Isle de Pécheurs (Fisherman’s Isle) from seeing natives fishing from their canoes when he passed in 1787. It was De Bougainville who, in 1768, gave the islands the name of the Navigators, in allusion to the great fleets of canoes, large and small, which he saw throughout the group. Upolu’s central ridge is about two thousand feet in height, wooded to the skyline, with but few roads, mostly the old war trails, connecting the northern and southern sides, winding down through the dense, cool forests that fill the valleys between the steep ridges running like ribs from the island backbone. There are good roads about Apia, and motor-cars are seen these days on the beautiful road that winds up to Vailima. But comparatively little travel is done by land except
Josiah Martin, photo
A native dwelling
around Apia; the islanders love to travel by water, and are fond of “malangas,” or travelling parties, setting out in their long whaleboats and pulling merrily along from bay to bay on the smooth waters of the reef-parapeted lagoon. The distance from the shore to the reef is in some places three or four miles; in others only a few hundred yards. The reef entrances are usually opposite the mouths of fresh-water streams, such as the Vai-Singano, which pours its cool mountain waters into the Apia bay. On the north side of Upolu the principal native villages, or rather towns, are—sailing eastward from the Manono passage—Le-ulu-moenga (“The Home-Pillow” or “Headquarters”), the capital of the Aana district, Malua (where there is a large Mission establishment, conducted by the London Missionary Society), then Apia, the metropolis of the Tuamasanga district; next Saluafata and Falefa, the headquarters of Atua; then the villages on beautiful deep Fanga-loa bay (“Long Harbour,” equivalent to our New Zealand Whanga-roa and Aka-roa) and Tiavea. On the South side, across the lofty backbone from Apia, are the pretty bays and harbours of Falelatai, Lefanga, Safata, Falealili, Salani, and Lotofunga.
Manono is thickly populated, a beautiful place, rich in food supplies, and famous for its warrior people. A place of legendry, and probably the original home of the old Maori legend of the wars of the heroic Whakatau and the burning of the great temple Te Tihi-o-Manono. There is a place-name in Upolu which commemorates a battle with a naval war-party from Manono. This is Tanunga-Manono, or commonly Tanuma-Manono, a village inland of Apia, meaning “The Burial-place of Manono.” The story goes that the Tuamasanga warriors came down in force upon a fleet of Manono canoes at Apia, and threw them into disorder, and that in their haste to escape out through the narrow reef passage, the canoes ran in confusion one upon the other, and great numbers fell to the Apia men’s clubs and spears. Many dead were buried in a pit at the spot which thus obtained its name. The name of Apia also had its origin in that beach and harbour battle: it is a contraction of “Apitia,” meaning straightened, “The Narrows,” in allusion to the mouth of the reef-horned bay. A similar name in New Zealand is “Te Apiti,” “The Gorge,” and another that bears an analogy to Apia is Te Kuiti, originally Te Kuititanga, in the King Country, named so fifty years ago by the Kingites in allusion to the narrowing-in of the Maori territory before the guns of the pakeha. Manono lies within the encircling reef of Upolu at its west end, and it rises gently to a height of nearly five hundred feet. There is about a mile of water between Manono and Apolima, and between Apolima to Savaii there is a strait seven miles long, four or four miles of which are clear for ships.
Upolu is long and comparatively narrow in shape. Savaii is about the same length but twice its width, a massive mountain island studded with volcanic craters old and new; a big, beautiful and fertile island, nevertheless, supporting a population of about four thousand people. It has plantations and fruit-groves in luxurious abundance, but the greater portion is mountain, and much is clothed in the ancient forests; here is some tall hardwood timber, excellent for boat-building purposes. At the extreme western end of Savaii, Falealupo, is the traditional Spirits’ Leap, where the souls of the dead depart to seek the “happy isles” of Pulotu, the Polynesian Paradise. There are some good bays here and there, such as Salailua, Matautu, Satupaitea, Sapapalii, and Amoa, all sheltered by the fringing breakwater of coral, all very picturesque, and rich in scenes of unspoiled native life. Savaii is famous chiefly for its great volcano, the world’s most enormous lava crater active in recent years. It burst out about ten vears ago in a deep ravine 1500 feet above sea-level and eight miles inland. The ejecta, incandescent rocks, built up a volcanic cone which filled the ravine, and then huge lava flows began, filling up valleys, destroying forests, and obliterating native villages. The crater and the streams of molten rock increased in magnitude, until a slow but irresistible river of fire, in places eight miles in width, a tremendous sheet of burning, smoking lava, came down, overwhelming everything in its path, and raising huge clouds of steam where it fell hissing into the ocean. “For more than half a mile from the shore,” wrote a correspondent, “the deep salt water is in a steaming state, and a mile out the water
Josiah Martin, photo
Making Kava, Samoa
is too hot for the hand to stay longer than to note its temperature. At a distance of two miles from the shore, where the great ocean is one hundred fathoms deep, the heat is very noticeable.” As the native villages, such as Matautu and Malo, were invaded by the tremendous stream the inhabitants left, and such white traders as were there had to pack their goods and seek less troubled quarters. The lava was described as resembling molten iron; when it fell into the sea it turned into black sand. Many millions of tons of this matter flowed from the colossal furnace—the Maunga-afi, a Mount of Fire, as the native called it—and with the solitary exception, perhaps, of the Hawaiian volcanoes, no crater on the globe has emitted such vast quantities of molten rock. The volcano is now quiescent and the people of Savaii are not apprehensive of further damage. At the most the streams were so slow-moving that the inhabitants were never in danger.
In these favoured islands the human animal reaches a magnificent physical development. The Samoans are a splendidly handsome race, men and women alike; a really ugly person is a curiosity. The men are tall, straight, and muscular, and the women, some of them almost as fair as Europeans, with delicate features, are famous for their beauty of face and figure. Unlike some of the other peoples of the Pacific, the Samoan holds his own against the encroaching papalangi; he still possesses not only most of his ancestral landed estate but his health and vigour and fecundity. The Samoans now number about 35,000, and if anything, they are increasing in numbers; at any rate they are not dying out like the fatalistic dreamy Marquesans and Tahitians, of whom the sad proverb goes, “Uahaere rau-fau, e mou te faarero, ua n’ao te ta’ata,” “The forest leaves fall, the coral hues fade, man passes away.”
I believe that it is to the frequent wars that the Samoan owes much of his virility and his keen interest in, and hold upon, life. The anti-militarist, or rather the anti-trainee, had no place in the Samoan commune. The native’s mental vigour is in keeping with his physical perfection, and he has had sufficient independence to retain most of his old customs and his picturesque and healthy primitive dwellings. One altogether admirable characteristic of the Samoan is that he firmly declines to wear trousers. He retains the simple waist-kilt or lavalava of the past, with the only difference that it is now a gay-coloured print, instead of a fringe of native cloth or leaves; the upper part of his body is bare, except when he considers it necessary to put on a shirt by way of honouring Sunday, some high feast day, or a visit to
A Chieftainess of Upolu
Apia town. To the simplicity of his dress he owes in great measure his health, as well as his air of nobility and free-footed independence. Samoans have found their way all over the Pacific as seamen on the white man’s barque, brig, or schooner, although probably they are out-done in sailorly skill and dexterity in surfing work by the men of Aitutaki and Niue. In modern times the people of the Samoas have abandoned their large sea-going canoes for long whaleboats of the papalangi style, although they use their smaller outrigger canoes in great numbers in lagoon-cruising and fishing. Many of their boats are of truly astonishing size. I saw in Apia harbour one which was sixty-five feet in length, pulling forty-four oars; it had been towed over from Salealua, Savaii island, by the New Zealand Government steamer Tutanekai for its owners, a Malietoa “hapu,” for fear the Mataafa rebels would destroy it. But there are much larger boats than this, and some_huge war-boats were destroyed by the British cruisers during that war of 1899 at the bays along the rebel coast: one is said to have been about 150 feet in length, with a beam of 15 or 16 feet, pulling two banks of oars, 150 in all, like some ancient Mediterranean galley.
Every few miles around the Upolu coast are populous villages, easily reached by boats inside the fringing reefs. On the rim of beach land that comes down to meet the quiet waters of the lagoon are the thatched high-roofed beehive-like dwellings of the brown people, half-hidden in the coconut groves. On the white sand of the waterside small dug-out canoes with outriggers are lying: larger canoes and one or two long boats are protected from the fierce sun by shelter sheds thatched with coconut palm leaves. Hot as is the glare of the noonday on the dancing outer waters and on the polished face of the lagoon and its dazzling sandy rim, all is pleasant and shady and cool under the tall clustering palms. The village is at its siesta, perhaps, and the stray traveller who walks up the hard clean beach will hear but the gentle breathing of the tideway upon the sand, and the swishing of the drooping coco-fronds in the breeze. But the visit of a papalangi soon stirs the lotos-eaters. “Talofa, ali’i!” “Love to you, O Chief!” is the greeting from the village women. The islanders come out to receive the stranger in the truly courteous fashion of the Samoan—noble-looking men with the torsos of a Hackenschmidt, and handsome graceful women, their only clothing perhaps a tapa kilt of native cloth (made from the bark of a tree) or a lavalava of print cloth, girded round the waist and falling to the knees; sometimes a loose blouse is added, or they perhaps wear the long loose gown fashionable throughout
Josiah Martin, photo
A Men’s Siva, Samoa
Polynesia. They lead the guest to the tribal meeting-house, a large oval building supported by massive ironwood pillars and open at the sides. The kava bowl is set before him, and straightway he is pledged a friend by the open-hearted people, who join with him in the ancient and pretty ceremony of pouring a libation to the guardian spirits of the household—the Aitu of the Polynesians. There will perhaps be a “siva”—the “hulahula” of the Hawaiians—when night comes, for the village people are always ready to sing and dance. A “siva-siva” is performed sitting as often as standing, the native girls sit cross-legged on the floor, airily costumed for the part, and sway from side to side and truly dance with every muscle of the body from the waist upwards, to the accompaniment of a song and chorus in the most liquid and beautiful tongue in the Pacific. No other race can sing as these South Sea Islanders sing. The men and women of Samoa and Tonga, Tahiti and Rarotonga seem to have absorbed by generations of life in the coral lands all the strange richness of the true voice of Nature. They have even taken the white man’s dreary hymns and have turned them into half wild, half-dreamy chants of barbaric days, chants of high cadences sudden rises and falls, and long-ending “aue’s,” “i’s” and “e’s.” The songs of these people of the many-islanded sea have all the harmony of the tropics, the crying and “ku-ku”ing of the birds, the singing of the wind in the palm-trees, the roll and crash of the surf on the outer reefs and the soft crooning murmur of the inner waters on the quiet lagoon shore.
The Samoan in the war days was no great shot except at close range. He was never so happy as when he could get to close quarters, make an opportune slash with his heavy knife, and jig shoreward in triumph, waving in time to a battle-chant the head of a foeman. What matter that the head were that of his cousin or his brother-in-law. It was all in the game. In the return of such a war-party, and their evening gathering over the kava, there was a fine barbaric touch, a reminder of Homeric, Ossianic days. Picture the landing of the crew of a flotilla on the beach of Apolima, back from the big wars—the high and musical welcome-song of the village-girls, the feasting and the hanging-up of the treasured weapons and the trophies of the fight, the laying of the 
Andrew, Apia, photo
A young Chieftainess of Malie, Upolu
The kava is waiting. “Kava for the chiefs, kava for the victors!” The cup—half a coconut shell—goes round, with deep-voiced cries of “Manuia!”—the island equivalent of “Skald!” In florid language and fervid oratory the battle is fought again, and so, quite in Ossianic style, goes on the “feast of shells.” And, as in all ages, the arms of the fair reward the brave.