OVER the whole extent of the South Seas, from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident1 Polynesian trembled for the future. We may accept some of the ideas of Mr. Darwin’s theory of coral islands, and suppose a rise of the sea, or the subsidence of some former continental2 area, to have driven into the tops of the mountains multitudes of refugees. Or we may suppose, more soberly, a people of sea-rovers, emigrants3 from a crowded country, to strike upon and settle island after island, and as time went on to multiply exceedingly in their new seats. In either case the end must be the same; soon or late it must grow apparent that the crew are too numerous, and that famine is at hand. The Polynesians met this emergent danger with various expedients4 of activity and prevention. A way was found to preserve breadfruit by packing it in artificial pits; pits forty feet in depth and of proportionate bore are still to be seen, I am told, in the Marquesas; and yet even these were insufficient6 for the teeming7 people, and the annals of the past are gloomy with famine and cannibalism8. Among the Hawaiians — a hardier9 people, in a more exacting10 climate — agriculture was carried far; the land was irrigated11 with canals; and the fish-ponds of Molokai prove the number and diligence of the old inhabitants. Meanwhile, over all the island world, abortion12 and infanticide prevailed. On coral atolls, where the danger was most plainly obvious, these were enforced by law and sanctioned by punishment. On Vaitupu, in the Ellices, only two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufetau, but one. On the latter the punishment was by fine; and it is related that the fine was sometimes paid, and the child spared.
This is characteristic. For no people in the world are so fond or so long-suffering with children — children make the mirth and the adornment13 of their homes, serving them for playthings and for picture-galleries. ‘Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them.’ The stray bastard14 is contended for by rival families; and the natural and the adopted children play and grow up together undistinguished. The spoiling, and I may almost say the deification, of the child, is nowhere carried so far as in the eastern islands; and furthest, according to my opportunities of observation, in the Paumotu group, the so-called Low or Dangerous Archipelago. I have seen a Paumotuan native turn from me with embarrassment15 and disaffection because I suggested that a brat16 would be the better for a beating. It is a daily matter in some eastern islands to see a child strike or even stone its mother, and the mother, so far from punishing, scarce ventures to resist. In some, when his child was born, a chief was superseded17 and resigned his name; as though, like a drone, he had then fulfilled the occasion of his being. And in some the lightest words of children had the weight of oracles18. Only the other day, in the Marquesas, if a child conceived a distaste to any stranger, I am assured the stranger would be slain19. And I shall have to tell in another place an instance of the opposite: how a child in Manihiki having taken a fancy to myself, her adoptive parents at once accepted the situation and loaded me with gifts.
With such sentiments the necessity for child-destruction would not fail to clash, and I believe we find the trace of divided feeling in the Tahitian brotherhood20 of Oro. At a certain date a new god was added to the Society-Island Olympus, or an old one refurbished and made popular. Oro was his name, and he may be compared with the Bacchus of the ancients. His zealots sailed from bay to bay, and from island to island; they were everywhere received with feasting; wore fine clothes; sang, danced, acted; gave exhibitions of dexterity21 and strength; and were the artists, the acrobats22, the bards23, and the harlots of the group. Their life was public and epicurean; their initiation24 a mystery; and the highest in the land aspired25 to join the brotherhood. If a couple stood next in line to a high-chieftaincy, they were suffered, on grounds of policy, to spare one child; all other children, who had a father or a mother in the company of Oro, stood condemned26 from the moment of conception. A freemasonry, an agnostic sect27, a company of artists, its members all under oath to spread unchastity, and all forbidden to leave offspring — I do not know how it may appear to others, but to me the design seems obvious. Famine menacing the islands, and the needful remedy repulsive28, it was recommended to the native mind by these trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. This is the more probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institution appears the more plainly, if it be true that, after a certain period of life, the obligation of the votary29 was changed; at first, bound to be profligate30: afterwards, expected to be chaste31.
Here, then, we have one side of the case. Man-eating among kindly32 men, child-murder among child-lovers, industry in a race the most idle, invention in a race the least progressive, this grim, pagan salvation-army of the brotherhood of Oro, the report of early voyagers, the widespread vestiges33 of former habitation, and the universal tradition of the islands, all point to the same fact of former crowding and alarm. And to-day we are face to face with the reverse. To-day in the Marquesas, in the Eight Islands of Hawaii, in Mangareva, in Easter Island, we find the same race perishing like flies. Why this change? Or, grant that the coming of the whites, the change of habits, and the introduction of new maladies and vices35, fully36 explain the depopulation, why is that depopulation not universal? The population of Tahiti, after a period of alarming decrease, has again become stationary37. I hear of a similar result among some Maori tribes; in many of the Paumotus a slight increase is to be observed; and the Samoans are to-day as healthy and at least as fruitful as before the change. Grant that the Tahitians, the Maoris, and the Paumotuans have become inured38 to the new conditions; and what are we to make of the Samoans, who have never suffered?
Those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to be ready with solutions. Thus I have heard the mortality of the Maoris attributed to their change of residence — from fortified39 hill-tops to the low, marshy40 vicinity of their plantations41. How plausible42! And yet the Marquesans are dying out in the same houses where their fathers multiplied. Or take opium43. The Marquesas and Hawaii are the two groups the most infected with this vice34; the population of the one is the most civilised, that of the other by far the most barbarous, of Polynesians; and they are two of those that perish the most rapidly. Here is a strong case against opium. But let us take unchastity, and we shall find the Marquesas and Hawaii figuring again upon another count. Thus, Samoans are the most chaste of Polynesians, and they are to this day entirely44 fertile; Marquesans are the most debauched: we have seen how they are perishing; Hawaiians are notoriously lax, and they begin to be dotted among deserts. So here is a case stronger still against unchastity; and here also we have a correction to apply. Whatever the virtues45 of the Tahitian, neither friend nor enemy dares call him chaste; and yet he seems to have outlived the time of danger. One last example: syphilis has been plausibly47 credited with much of the sterility48. But the Samoans are, by all accounts, as fruitful as at first; by some accounts more so; and it is not seriously to be argued that the Samoans have escaped syphilis.
These examples show how dangerous it is to reason from any particular cause, or even from many in a single group. I have in my eye an able and amiable49 pamphlet by the Rev5. S. E. Bishop50: ‘Why are the Hawaiians Dying Out?’ Any one interested in the subject ought to read this tract51, which contains real information; and yet Mr. Bishop’s views would have been changed by an acquaintance with other groups. Samoa is, for the moment, the main and the most instructive exception to the rule. The people are the most chaste and one of the most temperate52 of island peoples. They have never been tried and depressed53 with any grave pestilence54. Their clothing has scarce been tampered55 with; at the simple and becoming tabard of the girls, Tartuffe, in many another island, would have cried out; for the cool, healthy, and modest lava-lava or kilt, Tartuffe has managed in many another island to substitute stifling56 and inconvenient57 trousers. Lastly, and perhaps chiefly, so far from their amusements having been curtailed58, I think they have been, upon the whole, extended. The Polynesian falls easily into despondency: bereavement59, disappointment, the fear of novel visitations, the decay or proscription60 of ancient pleasures, easily incline him to be sad; and sadness detaches him from life. The melancholy61 of the Hawaiian and the emptiness of his new life are striking; and the remark is yet more apposite to the Marquesas. In Samoa, on the other hand, perpetual song and dance, perpetual games, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated62 and a smiling picture of the island life. And the Samoans are to-day the gayest and the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. The importance of this can scarcely be exaggerated. In a climate and upon a soil where a livelihood63 can be had for the stooping, entertainment is a prime necessity. It is otherwise with us, where life presents us with a daily problem, and there is a serious interest, and some of the heat of conflict, in the mere64 continuing to be. So, in certain atolls, where there is no great gaiety, but man must bestir himself with some vigour65 for his daily bread, public health and the population are maintained; but in the lotos islands, with the decay of pleasures, life itself decays. It is from this point of view that we may instance, among other causes of depression, the decay of war. We have been so long used in Europe to that dreary66 business of war on the great scale, trailing epidemics67 and leaving pestilential corpses68 in its train, that we have almost forgotten its original, the most healthful, if not the most humane69, of all field sports — hedge-warfare. From this, as well as from the rest of his amusements and interests, the islander, upon a hundred islands, has been recently cut off. And to this, as well as to so many others, the Samoan still makes good a special title.
Upon the whole, the problem seems to me to stand thus:— Where there have been fewest changes, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there the race survives. Where there have been most, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there it perishes. Each change, however small, augments70 the sum of new conditions to which the race has to become inured. There may seem, A PRIORI, no comparison between the change from ‘sour toddy’ to bad gin, and that from the island kilt to a pair of European trousers. Yet I am far from persuaded that the one is any more hurtful than the other; and the unaccustomed race will sometimes die of pin-pricks. We are here face to face with one of the difficulties of the missionary71. In Polynesian islands he easily obtains pre-eminent authority; the king becomes his MAIREDUPALAIS; he can proscribe72, he can command; and the temptation is ever towards too much. Thus (by all accounts) the Catholics in Mangareva, and thus (to my own knowledge) the Protestants in Hawaii, have rendered life in a more or less degree unliveable to their converts. And the mild, uncomplaining creatures (like children in a prison) yawn and await death. It is easy to blame the missionary. But it is his business to make changes. It is surely his business, for example, to prevent war; and yet I have instanced war itself as one of the elements of health. On the other hand, it were, perhaps, easy for the missionary to proceed more gently, and to regard every change as an affair of weight. I take the average missionary; I am sure I do him no more than justice when I suppose that he would hesitate to bombard a village, even in order to convert an archipelago. Experience begins to show us (at least in Polynesian islands) that change of habit is bloodier73 than a bombardment.
There is one point, ere I have done, where I may go to meet criticism. I have said nothing of faulty hygiene74, bathing during fevers, mistaken treatment of children, native doctoring, or abortion — all causes frequently adduced. And I have said nothing of them because they are conditions common to both epochs, and even more efficient in the past than in the present. Was it not the same with unchastity, it may be asked? Was not the Polynesian always unchaste? Doubtless he was so always: doubtless he is more so since the coming of his remarkably75 chaste visitors from Europe. Take the Hawaiian account of Cook: I have no doubt it is entirely fair. Take Krusenstern’s candid76, almost innocent, description of a Russian man-of-war at the Marquesas; consider the disgraceful history of missions in Hawaii itself, where (in the war of lust) the American missionaries77 were once shelled by an English adventurer, and once raided and mishandled by the crew of an American warship78; add the practice of whaling fleets to call at the Marquesas, and carry off a complement79 of women for the cruise; consider, besides, how the whites were at first regarded in the light of demi-gods, as appears plainly in the reception of Cook upon Hawaii; and again, in the story of the discovery of Tutuila, when the really decent women of Samoa prostituted themselves in public to the French; and bear in mind how it was the custom of the adventurers, and we may almost say the business of the missionaries, to deride80 and infract even the most salutary tapus. Here we see every engine of dissolution directed at once against a virtue46 never and nowhere very strong or popular; and the result, even in the most degraded islands, has been further degradation81. Mr. Lawes, the missionary of Savage82 Island, told me the standard of female chastity had declined there since the coming of the whites. In heathen time, if a girl gave birth to a bastard, her father or brother would dash the infant down the cliffs; and to-day the scandal would be small. Or take the Marquesas. Stanislao Moanatini told me that in his own recollection, the young were strictly83 guarded; they were not suffered so much as to look upon one another in the street, but passed (so my informant put it) like dogs; and the other day the whole school-children of Nuka-hiva and Ua-pu escaped in a body to the woods, and lived there for a fortnight in promiscuous84 liberty. Readers of travels may perhaps exclaim at my authority, and declare themselves better informed. I should prefer the statement of an intelligent native like Stanislao (even if it stood alone, which it is far from doing) to the report of the most honest traveller. A ship of war comes to a haven85, anchors, lands a party, receives and returns a visit, and the captain writes a chapter on the manners of the island. It is not considered what class is mostly seen. Yet we should not be pleased if a Lascar foremast hand were to judge England by the ladies who parade Ratcliffe Highway, and the gentlemen who share with them their hire. Stanislao’s opinion of a decay of virtue even in these unvirtuous islands has been supported to me by others; his very example, the progress of dissolution amongst the young, is adduced by Mr. Bishop in Hawaii. And so far as Marquesans are concerned, we might have hazarded a guess of some decline in manners. I do not think that any race could ever have prospered86 or multiplied with such as now obtain; I am sure they would have been never at the pains to count paternal87 kinship. It is not possible to give details; suffice it that their manners appear to be imitated from the dreams of ignorant and vicious children, and their debauches persevered88 in until energy, reason, and almost life itself are in abeyance89.
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improvident
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| adj.不顾将来的，不节俭的，无远见的 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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emigrants
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| n.（从本国移往他国的）移民( emigrant的名词复数 ) | |
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expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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cannibalism
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| n.同类相食；吃人肉 | |
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hardier
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| 能吃苦耐劳的，坚强的( hardy的比较级 )； （植物等）耐寒的 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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irrigated
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| [医]冲洗的 | |
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abortion
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| n.流产，堕胎 | |
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adornment
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| n.装饰；装饰品 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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brat
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| n.孩子；顽童 | |
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superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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oracles
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| 神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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acrobats
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| n.杂技演员( acrobat的名词复数 )；立场观点善变的人，主张、政见等变化无常的人 | |
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bards
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| n.诗人( bard的名词复数 ) | |
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initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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aspired
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| v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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votary
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| n.崇拜者；爱好者；adj.誓约的，立誓任圣职的 | |
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profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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plausibly
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| 似真地 | |
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sterility
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| n.不生育，不结果，贫瘠，消毒，无菌 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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tampered
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| v.窜改( tamper的过去式 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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curtailed
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| v.截断，缩短( curtail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bereavement
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| n.亲人丧亡，丧失亲人，丧亲之痛 | |
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proscription
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| n.禁止，剥夺权利 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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epidemics
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| n．流行病 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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augments
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| 增加，提高，扩大( augment的名词复数 ) | |
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missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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proscribe
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| v.禁止；排斥；放逐，充军；剥夺公权 | |
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73
bloodier
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| adj.血污的( bloody的比较级 )；流血的；屠杀的；残忍的 | |
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74
hygiene
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| n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic） | |
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75
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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76
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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77
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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78
warship
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| n.军舰，战舰 | |
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79
complement
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| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
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80
deride
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| v.嘲弄，愚弄 | |
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81
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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82
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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83
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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84
promiscuous
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| adj.杂乱的，随便的 | |
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85
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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86
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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87
paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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88
persevered
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| v.坚忍，坚持( persevere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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89
abeyance
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| n.搁置，缓办，中止，产权未定 | |
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