Tutuila (U. S.)

THERE are two classes of men — as we count men of our race: those who have been to the South Seas, and those who have not; those who have felt the fascination of the surf on the coral reefs, the wind in the cocoanut palms, “the wide and starry sky,” the deep warm silence of the bush; those who on honey dew have fed, and those to whom all this life is far away, known only through the stories of traders, the annals of missionaries, the glowing pages of Melville, or the witchery of Stevenson.

In the South Seas are the asteroids of our earthly cosmos, — little green worlds, thousands of them, filled with joyous people who do not know and who do not care whether there exist other worlds of other people, as innocent of curiosity as to what happens in London or New York, as the folks of Vesta and Ceres are careless of the mightier politics of their planetary neighbors, Mars and Jupiter.

The little world may be a ring of broken corals like a pile of scrap iron, fringed with tall cocoa palms, around a blue lagoon into which breaks the endless white surf of the tropics; or it may be the sharp crest of uplifted volcanoes over some flaw in the earth’s crust. If our island is a volcano’s top, it will be velvetcarpeted to the summit with wide-leaved evergreen trees, intertangled with palms and tree ferns, and all inextricably tied together with the meshwork of the long lianas. Down through the dense green bush rush clear dancing streams, with deep pools for the green sesele or mountainbass, and white waterfalls for the playground of laughing girls. All along the shores are awave with tall palms, and on the gray barrier reef the blue sea is awash with white breakers. In the water and on the shore everywhere are the joyous people, shining like clean, oiled, varnished leather, straight and strong as Greeks, simple as children, happy, affectionate, irresponsible and human, — such men as there were when the earth was young.

There in the South Seas lies Tutuila. Four thousand miles to the southwest of the Golden Gate of California, “the second place to the left as you leave San Francisco,” to borrow Stevenson’s droll definition, Honolulu lying midway,— there you will find the green islands of Samoa. Volcanoes make the mountains and gorges and solid land of these islands; two hundred inches of rain a year and an ardent tropic sun make its wonderful forest and bush and graceful palms; the “coral insect” makes its white shoreline and cruel reefs, while copra makes its enduring smell, and its shifting civilization. And about it all is the abiding presence of the Ocean. From every vantage point one sees the blue water meet the blue sky; ever in one’s ears is the low growl of the repulsed waters breaking on the guarding reef; in every direction is it ocean-wide away to the world!

There are four principal islands in the Samoan group, besides six islets. The largest island lies to the west, the others, progressively smaller and, geologically, progressively older, to the eastward. The first is Savaii, forty-five miles long and thirty miles wide, the primitive creating volcanoes not yet cold, their rugged sides overrun with liana-bound forests, as yet impassable to man. Next comes Upolu, forty miles by fifteen, richest in cocoanuts and in arable land, its town Apia, the principal one in the islands, its green mountain Vaea, with the glossy farm of Vailima on its flanks, securely within the Valhalla of literary fame. Apia harbor, calm and safe in ordinary days when the trades blow across from the land, changes into a narrow gorge with jagged jaws of coral in the season of the northwest hurricanes. Then great ships are helpless in its tortuous channels, and the sheltering reefs become themselves the sources of the direst danger. It was in 1889, in this harbor, that an impatient hurricane blew its breath on a Gordian knot of world politics and made ropy spindrift of it.

Fifty miles beyond Upolu lies Tutuila, twenty miles long, and from two to five miles wide. Sixty miles still farther to the southeast, out in the sea, is Manua, almost circular, ten miles in diameter, and oldest of all the Samoan Islands in geological time, and once most honored in hereditary leadership.

Tutuila is primarily a huge volcanic crater, which has built up the island with the lava it has ejected. This crater of Pago-Pago is fringed about with steep walls from 1000 to 2500 feet high, almost vertical on the inner edge after the fashion of craters, sloping away on the outside as the lava flows, two points in its rim, the mountains of Matafao and Peoa, much higher than the rest, and with a break half a mile wide on the south, letting in the sea. The harbor of Pago-Pago,¹ thus formed within the crater of Peoa, is nearly two miles deep and a mile wide. This size is, however, much reduced by the barrier reef which occupies half the strait at the entrance, and which forms an unbroken rim about the shore within. But with all this, there is room enough, if not for all the navies of the world, for all the ships likely ever to put in to Samoa. The winding entrance shuts out all surf from the south, and the great walls on every other side make the harbor securely landlocked, whatever the hurricane without. It is, in brief, the one good harbor in all the South Seas, and for that reason it is of high value to a great nation with expansive commercial aspirations. In any case, it is now ours, and is likely to remain so, a mere dock and coaling station in the eyes of our American administrators, but to its people the colony of Tutuila of the United States of America, a position in their eyes far nobler than to be an independent kingdom. Long ago was Pago-Pago ceded to us, and a coaling station established there; but the whole island came to us only on the division, in 1891, of the Samoan group between Germany and the United States.

Of arable land Tutuila has practically none: a few wet places are planted to taro, that curious aroid or tropical jackin-the-pulpit, whose tuber is the substitute for the potato throughout the Pacific islands, and for all modern predigested foods, which find their prototype in poi. Along the seashore and on the lower flanks of the mountains is the cocoanut palm, the most graceful tree that grows. The cocoanut furnishes the only article of export from the island, and is,besides, the chief provider of the native’s food, drink, clothes, house, and house furnishings. Moors, the American trader of Apia, has said that the South Sea islander awakes in the morning, naked, hungry, and athirst. He rises, climbs a cocoanut tree, and comes down clothed, fed, and drunk. To achieve the last-named condition he must have climbed this tree once, some days before, and tapped a fruiting stem so that its quickly fermenting sap may run out into a shell cup suspended from it. The cocoanut product for export bears that magic name of South Sea tales, copra. This is simply the meat of ripe cocoanuts cut out in little strips, and dried in the sun. The oily, shriveled bits are packed into sacks, and sold to the traders, who ship them to Hamburg, to San Francisco, or to Sydney. From this copra is expressed the familiar cocoanut or palm oil used in making certain soaps. All the copra from all of Samoa — and by far the major part of it comes from the German island Upolu — amounts to barely half a million dollars’ worth a year. And beyond copra the Samoan exports consist chiefly in much hopeful talk about some future cacao (chocolate). Besides cocoanuts, the banana, breadfruit, papaya, orange, mango, and a few other food trees grow freely, although but little attention is paid to their cultivation. Without effort on the part of any one there is fruit enough for all. Add to this fruit, fish, chickens, pigs, bêche de mer, and squid, and the island contributions to the Samoan’s bill of fare are practically all named. As bonnes bouches fat larvæ of giant wood-boring beetles, or the uncooked insides of fresh sea-urchins, may be added. Once a year, too, in the full moon of November the strange sea-worm Palolo rises from the depths to spawn, and to furnish the natives with their daintiest tidbit. An acquired taste for canned salmon—familiarly known as pea soupa, — the principal American export to this interesting colony of ours — is much in evidence among all Samoans. Our farewell gift to royalty consisted of a great tin of ship’s biscuit, and a case of Columbia River salmon, and it distinctly had the royal approval.

There is no encouragement for white settlers in Tutuila. At present the natives are not allowed to sell their land, and if they were the land could not easily be worked. Laborers are scarce, and the price of a day’s work very high. The natives are excellent laborers on other islands when carried, willingly or unwillingly, from their own place, but they do not care to work at home. The communistic conditions, general within the tropics, largely account for this. When a native earns a few dollars his own relatives and those of his wife at once pay him a visit, and the surplus is promptly spent for pea soupa (canned goods), or for material for personal ornamentation. We once paid Vaiula, our head fisherman at Apia, a considerable sum for a fortnight’s catch. The same night it was necessary for him to borrow or beg a shilling to go to the circus where his own son was a star performer. The poverty of the tropics is due chiefly to the communism of the people, and the consequent lack of individual incentive. To the generosity of the tropics we may again ascribe the possibility of this communism. There is enough for all and to spare. Why, then, should they not share it with one another ? Because there is so much there is no reason why any one should accumulate a surplus.

In Upolu the labor problem has been partly met by the Germans through the introduction of the “black boys” from the Solomon Islands. They make picturesque figures, rambling through the great cocoanut plantation with their little pack donkeys. But they are a dwarfish, negrolike people, held in low esteem by the freeborn, stalwart Samoans, and their retention in semi-slavery is already adding a race problem to the many difficulties of the government at Apia. The great German planting and trading firm (Deutsche Plantagen und Handelsgesellschaft), successor to the once mighty Godeffroys, is pushing for permission to import the allconquering Chinese coolie. If he comes the work will be done, but Stevenson’s people will certainly become only encumbering ornaments in their own land. In Tutuila, the laborers on the government coal wharves are Tongans, brought from the Friendly Islands, five hundred miles south of Samoa. The Tongans are of the same stock as the Samoans. The Maoris of New Zealand, the Tahitians of the beautiful French Society Islands, the Marquesans, with whom Hermann Melville lived his idyllic life, the Hawaiians, now almost gone as a pure-blooded race, the Tongans and Samoans constitute the various branches of the Polynesian race, all tall, well-proportioned, straight-haired, beautiful brown people. Anthropologists name the Polynesians as the finest people, physically, in the world. And the erect, great-chested, strong-limbed, supple Samoans are a revelation of the present-day reality of the Greek sculptor’s ideal. But the Papuan, negroid, and Malay races that inhabit the myriad islands of Micronesia and Melanesia are mostly ugly and malformed specimens of the human species.

The dense forests of Tutuila have little value as timber. The breadfruit furnishes the curious beams and rafters of the mushroom houses, while the great cocoanut fronds roof them over. But these are not trees of the forest. In the wild wood and bush live numerous kinds of birds, species allied to the honey-creepers, a few sorts of paroquets, a robin, a much-hunted dove species, some showily colored little kingfishers, a crow, an owl, and a few other predatory forms. The little blue and orange kingfishers are odd in that they are most often to be found far up on the mountain sides in the dense forest where there are certainly no fishes to fish for. The natives say that they peck out the eyes of other birds, and the American officer in charge of the customs, who keeps a few chickens for company and Sunday dinners, has repeatedly noticed the kingfishers dashing at his hens!

A species of flying-fox, a large fruiteating bat nearly a foot long, abounds in the forests, and is the only native mammal. This interesting beast, called pei, is used as food, and is often seen in daytime climbing among the trees like a pigmy goblin. One species of snake is found in Upolu and Savaii, and that but sparingly. It is a harmless serpent, allied to the garter snakes, but reaching a notable size. Lizards are numerous, but the species are few and not large.

The fringing coral reefs of all these islands abound in fishes and invertebrate life. We obtained six hundred and twenty species of fishes from the harbors of Apia and Pago-Pago, all shore forms of the reefs, there being little opportunity for outside fishing or collecting from deep water. So large a number is not recorded from any other ports so small as these. The flat-topped reefs are partly exposed at low tide, but are covered with pools of every size. The reef itself is loose and broken at the surface and fissured on the edges, and fish creep and swim through all the openings and crevices. The large dead masses of branching corals are also filled with small fishes, slippery morays winding in and out the open spaces, while gayly colored damsel-fishes and butterflyfishes cluster in the larger cavities. Everywhere in the tide pools and reef crevices swarm brittle - stars, sea-urchins, starfishes, crabs, sea-worms, and mollusks: under coral blocks and on the sand floor in shallow water are hosts of sea-cucumbers (Holothurians) of half - a - dozen species, while little octopuses go swimming backwards in inky clouds across the pools. The echinoderms are remarkably represented both in number of species and individuals, and include some extraordinary forms. At low tide the native women and children wade and poke about over the reefs, collecting bêche de mer, octopuses, and sea-urchins for food. They turn the big octopuses inside out by a dextrous jerk, thus disabling them so that they can be handily carried alive. Our collecting was largely done by poisoning the temporary tide pools with chloride of lime, by breaking up masses of dead coral with a hammer, and by throwing dynamite into deep angles and fissures of the reefs.

Many fishes of the coral reefs show protective coloring in the highest degree. Such species usually lie quiescent on the bottom, the general hue being a blotched or mottled gray. But in all the pools abound species which give defiance to all notions of mimicry or protective coloration. There are damsel - fishes (Pomacentrus), locally called Taupo (the exact cognate of the West Indian names, Damsel, Demoiselle, and Doncella), of every shade of blue, except dull shades, and marked with vivid golden or scarlet dashes. These fishes save themselves by their excessive quickness and their power of darting into small crevices. Apparently they have no need of protective coloration, and have no fear of any enemies in the reefs. Everywhere about the reefs abound butterfly-fishes (Chœtodon), with bright yellow as a ground color, fantastically striped or streaked or spotted with blue or black. Bizarre rainbow-fishes (Labridœ), each species bearing streaks or marks of every possible color, abound everywhere, and in all the deeper pools are crimson soldier-fishes (Holocentrus), parrot-fishes (Scarus), and surgeon-fishes (Teuthis), almost all of them colored as brilliantly as fish - pigment can make them. No birds and no flowers of any land are colored more gayly than the fishes of the Samoan reefs. In the open waters we find fishes of the usual protective shades, blue-green above and silvery below, while in the rivers the fishes are green-speckled, and colored like the stones. It is only within the retreats of the great reef that the mad riot of color develops itself.

In Samoa the skipping goby (Periopthalmus), a little froglike fish with protruding eyes, is very common in muddy brooks and piles of stone along the shore. This active little creature leaves the water, climbing bushes and lurking on logs in pursuit of insects. It often waits on shore, in concealment, for the tide to return. It skips over the ground like a lizard, and in like fashion will flutter over the surface of the water without sinking.

Almost the only noxious animal of Samoa is the mosquito, but this is truly a fearful pest; not simply as a buzzing and stinging torment, but as the intermediate host and disseminator of the dreadful scourge elephantiasis. This is a form of filariasis in which the minute parasitic filariæ lodge in the lymphatic glands, and produce a remarkable hypertrophy of the subcutaneous tissue, so that a man’s leg may come to weigh as much as all the rest of his body, or his arm be simply a great useless cylindrical mass a foot in diameter. The specific cause of the disease is the parasitic blood-worm Filaria sanguinis-hominis, which passes part of its life in the body, particularly the thoracic muscles, of the mosquito. The exact mode of migration of the parasite from the mosquito to man is yet undetermined; whether by the bite, that is, the piercing of the skin with the oral proboscis, or whether it occurs by the drinking of water in which the dead bodies of infested mosquitoes have disintegrated, is still undetermined. The filariæ have been observed to migrate from the thorax of the mosquito into its labium (the fleshy sheath of the proboscis), and even to escape from the tip of the labium. This points strongly to the possibility of infection at the time of piercing, but the parasites are large, and few could enter the blood at one time. The disease has obtained an amazing prevalency among the natives, almost certainly one third or more — Manson estimates it at one half — being afflicted. It is incurable, at least in all cases of a certain length of standing, and even from the first if the patient remains in the tropics. It causes the patient little pain, being attended, however, at certain recurring intervals by fever, but in its advanced stages so deforms the body as to make the sufferer incapable of walking or of almost any other motion. White men are occasionally attacked; one white patient was seen near Pago-Pago during our stay. If the disease once seated is incurable, remedial measures must be of the nature of a campaign against the intermediary mosquito, the most abundant species of which is, interestingly enough, the same species, Stegomyia fasciata, so abundant in Cuba, and by the researches of American surgeons and physicians now practically convicted of breeding and disseminating the (still unknown) parasite of yellow fever.

So far as the Samoan people are concerned the most valuable possible result of American rule would be the stamping out of the mosquito in Tutuila, and steps in this direction have already been taken.

Throughout the South Seas the white trader, usually with a native wife, has stood in the time-honored twofold relation of shepherd to the sheep. At the best, the trader looks well after his flocks, protects them from the unlicensed wolves, and shears them with great regularity. The trader is always an interesting character, and sometimes an attractive and charming one. But he is “not there for his health” alone, and for the most part he finds his pastoral occupation financially profitable. A good example of the best type is Moors, a famous American trader of Apia, one time host, friend, and business man of Robert Louis Stevenson. He has traded in the South Seas for thirty years, knows the languages and the natives of a dozen widely separated groups of islands, has sixteen trading stations scattered through the various Samoan islands and islets, and is sole proprietor and king of two lonesome little Pacific coral islands a thousand miles apart, on one of which he raises sea-turtles, on the other cocoanuts. How he came to own one of these diminutive kingdoms is a story which reveals an interesting incident in Stevenson’s life. The island, a perfect little emerald gem in the sapphire Pacific, was seen by Stevenson on one of his cruises, and so fascinated him by its unique beauty that he insisted that Moors should try to discover if any nation or man claimed proprietary rights in it, and if so, to bargain for it on his, Stevenson’s, account. Moors learned that a French trader of Tahiti claimed the island, but would sell his rights for two thousand pounds. This Stevenson could not afford, but he urged Moors to try to get an offer of one thousand pounds, and if so to take it. In the meantime Stevenson set off on a voyage to Sydney. On his return, Moors was able to tell him that he had succeeded in buying the island for fifteen hundred pounds, thinking that Stevenson would be willing to pay so much. But Stevenson, who seemed to have quite forgotten his former interest in the island and insistence on its purchase, threw up his hands in dismay, saying, “Impossible. I have spent all my money.” And Moors owns the island to this day. The trader says dryly of his famous companion’s attitude toward business matters, “Stevenson was essentially a literary man, you know.”

In Stevenson’s A Footnote to History, the recent history of Samoa has been recounted with the just faithfulness of a great historian. Most of it revolves about the noble personality of Mata’afa, savage statesman and king, a man of character, dignity, ambition, and moderation, a representative of all that is strongest and most serious in Samoan life.

After the days of Malietoa Laupepa, the jurisdiction fell into the hands of the Tripartite Convention, the local representatives of the three great powers, — England, Germany, and the United States. If in Stevenson’s time life in Apia was enlivened by “a fresh conspiracy every day,” the condition of strenuous activity was still further emphasized under this threefold arrangement. Most notable of these intrigues were those that brought in Malietoa Tanu, and balked the natives in their choice of Mata’afa. The resulting confusion led among other things to a wanton attack on Apia by a combined American and British force from ships in the harbor. This attack, begun without warrant, and against all good advice, ended disastrously, and recently a joint tribunal has compelled the nations concerned to make good the damages inflicted. This is one of the most hopeful incidents in the history of arbitration, for the judges considered the question of justice alone, without the effort shown by most previous courts of arbitration to consider the opposing claims, and then to split the difference. It was this affair that brought the Tripartite Convention to an end, and divided the islands between Germany and the United States. To Germany fell Upolu and Savaii, the larger islands with their copra and hoped-for cacao. To the United States came the definite ownership of the admirable harbor of Pago-Pago, with the incidental encumbrance of jurisdiction over Tutuila and Manua, and all the petty complications which this jurisdiction entails.

Mata’afa is now the head chief of German Samoa. He fought against the Germans during the rule of their puppet-king Tamasese. He was vice-king, and centre of the opposition during the rule of Malietoa Laupepa, whose authority was dependent on German support. When English intrigue brought forward as king the weak boy Malietoa Tanu, Mata’afa again represented the opposition, and the support of his old enemies, the Germans, now became his strength. The division of the islands disposed of Malietoa Tanu, and now such royalty as exists, under the palms of the old capital on the sandspit of Mulinu’u, rests again with Mata’afa.

In these struggles Tutuila seems to have taken little part. Her head chief, Manga of Pago-Pago, was from the first friendly to American rule. He gave an active welcome to Commodore Tilley, the first American governor, and the details of American control were at once arranged on a living basis.

The chiefs of Tutuila came together on April 17, 1900, and voted to cede the island to the United States. A deed of cession was drawn up with great formality. It was signed, engrossed, and forwarded to the President. No answer was received to this paper. The Samoan people are sensitive to slights. It is part of their etiquette that a gift should be promptly acknowledged, and they had offered the greatest gift within their power to make. They had presented their whole island to the President of the United States, and he had not deigned to notice the gift. Perhaps he never saw the deed of cession, perhaps he was in doubt as to the constitutional and consistent answer. To acknowledge that we hold Tutuila by the gift of her chiefs and people might question the validity of the treaty with Great Britain and Germany which preceded this deed. Conditions became difficult for Commodore Tilley and for his successor, Captain Sebree. The matter came to the attention of President Roosevelt, and with characteristic straightforwardness, he proceeded to set the matter right, careless of all questions of precedent.

According to advices from Pago-Pago, the 16th of January, 1903, “will always be a red-letter day for the Samoans.” On that day the commandant of Tutuila called the people together “to receive from the President his reply to the instrument of cession given on the seventeenth day of April, 1900, by the chiefs and people of the island to the United States, and to receive the presents which were for warded.” Besides watches and medals suitably engraved, each chief received a written greeting under the hand of the President, accepting the offer of the people. To the Samoan guard of native soldiers,or “fita-fitas,” the United States flag was presented by Acting LieutenantGovernor Minett.

On all public occasions in Samoa the addresses are made by official “talking men.” The translation of the speeches of Alapa and Tuiasosopo, talking men of Tutuila, are here given, as officially reported by the “talking man,” or interpreter, of the commandant of Tutuila.

Alapa, speaking for the western district, the “counties” of Fofo and Aitulagi, said: —

“Your Excellency, the Commandant, representing the President of the United States of America, to you the Secretary of Native Affairs, and to the officers of the Government assembled here to-day, greeting.

“ I am Fofo and Aitulagi. I speak for all my people; my word is the voice of all.

“Many thanks! Many thanks! Many thanks! Many thanks!

“ We are all gratified to-day. We had doubts about the Government at first; we were wallowing in the mud, but now we are on dry land.

“ Previously Samoans carried arms and ammunition; they lost much money in purchasing them, but now — thanks! The arms have been surrendered to the Government, which has paid for them, and there is no further need for guns, because a strong Government gives us peace!

“ We are pleased with the Government.

“ The Government has been good, and we are better than formerly. These are my only words. Let the Government prosper.”

Tuiasosopo, for the eastern district, Sua and Vaifanua and the islet of Aunuu, continued: —

“I am talking for Sua and Vaifanua. Fofo and Aitulagi have expressed their thanks. I add now the thanks of Sua and Vaifanua. We witness to-day our union with the United States of America, and we accept with rejoicing the relationship. We have seen the good will and kind intentions of the Government toward us. We are happy. The laws have been made and the courts established. The people are progressing. May good feeling always exist between the Samoan people and the United States of America.”

So much, and good, for Tutuila. But there was something lacking in these inspiring scenes. The talking men of Tuamanua, the king of Manua, our (by treaty) second island, were not heard on this notable occasion. Tuamanua and his people did not deed their island to the United States, nor does this king willingly allow the flag of the republic to wave over his royal hut. And only a year ago he showed plainly that he does not consider himself a vassal of the President of the United States.

Tuamanua is a man of some education and of decided personal force. He has kept his people out of debt, and out of the clutches of beach-combers, and has even organized them into a sort of coöperativetrading company with some success. But he clings to the old traditions of his island, and one of these is that the king of Manua outranks any of the chiefs who rule parts of other islands. Therefore, when Mauga, the sagacious and dignified chief of the eastern half of Tutuila, visited Manua a year ago, he was received with exceptional welcome, but when in the ceremonial kava-drinking the talking man, or master of ceremonies, presented Mauga with his cup in such style as to indicate his equality with Tuamanua, the latter resented this lèse-majesté. The offending talking man was brought before a specially convened court of chiefs and given the old Samoan condemnation. His house must be destroyed, his cocoanut trees cut down, his mats and tapas wasted, and his life made forfeit to the king. This coming to the attention of the American commandant at Pago-Pago, brought to Tuamanua a note to the effect that the American statutes do not recognize lèsemajesté, and that no such condign punishment must befall the unlucky sinner against the code of Manuan etiquette. A deal of trouble ensued, resulting in a trial by a naval court of several Manuan chiefs, and the falling into contempt of court by Talefua, the chief talking man of Tuamanua, and his detention for six months on the island of Tutuila. Meanwhile Tuamanua, having to do his own talking, must have felt more than ever incensed against a tyrant who not only overruled his royal prerogatives in the matter of the ipu of kava, but possessed itself for six months of the royal voice!

Kava is the national drink of Samoa. It is prepared by pouring fresh water over the crushed dry root of a plant of the pepper family. This crushing used to be done by the strong white teeth of the fairest village maiden, the taupo, but in deference to the prejudices of an alien race, the taupo, in these effete days, vigorously wields a small stone on pieces of the root held in a curious many-legged bowl. The drink is made freshly for each drinking, and much formal ceremony attends its preparation and tossing off. So elaborate and precise is this ceremonial on state and official occasions, that, as we have noted, kings may come to war or to deep humiliation through its modification or infraction. Kava is wholly non-alcoholic, and owes the particular effects of its use to an alkaloid. It produces first a curious partial local anæsthesia of the tongue and throat, then a slight stimulation of the mental faculties, and if much of the liquid is taken at one sitting a loss of control of the legs. But it can be used moderately, with apparently little or no harm. It is drunk many times a day by the natives, and occasionally a long sitting around the kava bowl is indulged in by a group of convivial spirits.

Less difficult, perhaps, than questions of royal precedence, but still full of practical embarrassment, are many other details of government. The interests at stake in Tutuila are relatively small, but the consequences of a mistake may be very disastrous, the more so as these people, less than six thousand all told, have little conception of the vastness of the United States or of their own smallness in its political perspective. The only interest we have in Tuamanua is to protect him and his people from being carried away some night by the " blackbirders ” to work on some African sugar plantation. But as the king of an equal and sovereign state, he may declare war on us at any time, if he regards his hereditary rights as invaded. It would be easy to crush him and kill his people, but it would be wanton slaughter, with no gain of any sort. At Pago-Pago, when the flags are flying, the band playing, and the fita-fitas march in their showy blue and red semi-Turkish uniforms, it is easy to encourage and maintain the feeling of loyalty. Thus far, too, the government has been in efficient and considerate hands: hence the public has heard little of the difficulties of the situation. But the commandant finds plenty of these. In the first place Congress has never defined the status of the colony. The commandant is a naval officer with uncertain powers. The revenues of government come mainly from import duties. It is not certain whether Tutuila is territory of the United States. If it be such, and the United States tariff is in effect, then goods from the United States are admitted free. By the terms of the treaty with Great Britain and Germany, these countries have the same trading privileges in Tutuila as the United States. Consequently all goods from British Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, or from German Samoa, should also come in free. There are no imports from anywhere else, and to adopt the view that these islands are within our tariff limits would be to destroy all their revenue. It might also create in them an open door to smuggling on a large scale. Free wool from Australia would break a great gap in our present protective tariff fence. If we regard Tutuila as outside the tariff limits of the United States, the tariff charged is arbitrary, resting apparently on the will of the commandant alone. This condition exposes him to legal attacks on the part of dissatisfied traders as soon as he sets foot on the mainland. An absolute monarch while on the islands, he may find San Francisco full of legal questions which may give him serious embarrassment.

Moreover, the commandant finds it necessary to oppose constantly certain interests of the traders. Copra is worth about three cents a pound in San Francisco. The trader buys it from the natives at a cent and a quarter, paying in “trade” at his own prices, and weighing it in on his own scales. These scales, through long stay in the tropics, sometimes become curiously affected. One of the American officers, happening to be in a small trading station away from PagoPago, weighed himself on the trader’s scales. He was dismayed to find that his weight had fallen from one hundred and eighty pounds to one hundred and thirtyfive, having lost fully forty pounds since beginning his half day’s journey from Pago-Pago.

The liquor matter, too, offers its difficulties. Fortunately the natives of Samoa mostly prefer kava to “square-face” (gin). But the white man of the South Seas usually develops a chronic thirst. In Apia liquor is sold to white men with no visible restraint, but there has been virtual prohibition in Tutuila, and where prohibition really prohibits the opposition to it becomes deadly earnest. Whether an American hotel, with a bar, shall come into being or not at Pago-Pago has been a matter constantly coming up to remind the commandant that being rider of Tutuila is not simply leave of absence to doze on a tropic beach. Nor has the problem of religious toleration been always simple. The natives of Samoa were early converted to Christianity. Each village has a large church, usually much too large, but built so as to outdo its neighbors. Sunday is devoted almost entirely to “ mijinery; ” this useful and expressive word denoting church-going, pastors, church members, or almost anything else connected with the London Missionary Society’s work. “Popa” is similarly the all-including word for Roman Catholic missions, priests, and neophytes. Six or seven services are held each Sunday in the native churches, the major part of each being vigorous, enthusiastic, and not unmelodious singing. Familiar hymns, recast a little to suit the Samoan voice and custom, and translated into the resonant vowels and few liquid consonants, come ringing out through the whole day. At night, too, groups of natives will squat on the mats under the mushroom roof of some large hut, and sing there hour after hour for pure joy of tune and rhythm. Our boatmen would sing as we came rowing home, just before the quick twilight, from the day’s collecting on the reefs. The tenor begins the melody, and after a few bars the bass joins with a sort of native harmony, an instinctive counterpoint; then the tenor rests, the bass singing alone for a few measures, soon to be rejoined by the higher voice. At each ceasing the last one or two syllables are given in a curious jerkily spoken or shouted way, not unlike that sometimes heard from Wagnerian baritones and basses on the German stage.

Until lately the London Missionary Society and the Roman Catholics (much less strongly entrenched) have had a practical monopoly of religious activity. But recently Mormon missionaries have begun to attract many natives, and to get a firm footing. These Mormon propagandists seem to be a most practical and effective set of workers. They teach practical industries, and not only in Samoa, but elsewhere in the South Seas, are rapidly gaining followers. Some of the industrial teaching of the London Missionary Society seems to have taken the lines which so thoroughly aroused the indignation and contempt of Mary Kingsley on the West Coast of Africa. At least, our head fisherman at Apia showed us with great pride a daintily bound little hymn-book, the binding and rather ornate tooling having all been done by his son in “mijinery school.” The Mormons attend rather to planting and woodworking than to gilt-patterned bookbindings.

The influence of the missionaries has certainly been for the most part beneficial to the natives. The constant antagonism of the less reputable traders and the beach-combers — the lost human flotsam and jetsam of the South Seas — to the missionaries is shining evidence that their work is for the real good of the natives. But two things they have brought into the life of our joyous brown wards of the coral beaches which are certainly calamitous. These are clothing, and, by consequence, pneumonia. As terrible a scourge as elephantiasis is, pneumonia is the more rapidly destructive, and in time it may depopulate the islands. In the good old days the rains beat upon the shining oiled shoulders and back of the halfnaked native as harmlessly as on the wellpreened plumage of the wild duck; but now the cheap cotton shirt or white jacket clings wet and clammy to the skin, the quick chill strikes through the blood, and the end comes with appalling swiftness and certainty. The gaudily be-ribboned, absurd little chip hat pinned to the great mass of long black hair, and the immodest holuku (Mother Hubbard gown) of the women, and the tightly buttoned white barber’s jacket above the bare brown legs of the men, really reach the climax of absurdity, and, what is worse, they are unwholesome both for health and morals. But such is the costume of the saved! Well that they be truly saved, for they have made a fair start in their “mijinery” clothes, to test quickly the power of their new religion.

Years ago the conditions in Hawaii were much as now in Samoa. The cultivation of sugar, the rush of commercial prosperity, the immigration of a few white men and of a host of Orientals have changed the old condition of Hawaii. The native is now only an incident in the economic development of the territory. Politically, he is a nuisance, because he has a vote; he delights in hustings, and he has not the slightest interest in hoarding money either by himself or by the state. Hence his vote is always for lavish expenditure. The principles of democracy find their severest strain in the presence of race problems. When one race has no regard for what the other holds dear, it is not easy to found a commonwealth on unity of interests. In Hawaii, the American becomes impatient of a people who care more for the fragrance of a flower, the flutter of a ribbon, and the joys of gossip, than for constitutional liberty, industrial prosperity, or commercial progress. The native is equally impatient of those who hoard money, where money exists only to be spent. “No better than a haole ” (foreigner) is their pungent description of the native who earns money and then keeps it. In Samoa the old ideals still hold in their original picturesque beauty. It is a race of primitive Homeric folk which abides there. May it remain so for a thousand years, and in our ipu of kava may we drink the health of Mata - afa, Seiumanu of the hurricane night, Mauga and Tuamanua, great human men that they are, not forgetting the memory of Tusitala, greatest, wisest, and most human of these island chieftains all.