The sheep must have died off; for I never saw a solitary fleece in any part of Polynesia. The pair left, were an ill assorted couple, perhaps; separated in disgust, and died without issue.

  As for the goats, occasionally you come across a black, misanthropic ram, nibbling the scant herbage of some height inaccessible to man, in preference to the sweet grasses of the valley below. The goats are not very numerous.

  The bullocks, coming of a prolific ancestry, are a hearty set, racing over the island of Imeeo in considerable numbers; though in Tahiti, but few of them are seen. At the former place, the original pair must have scampered off to the interior, since it is now so thickly populated by their wild progeny. The herds are the private property of Queen Pomaree; from whom the planters had obtained permission to shoot for their own use, as many as they pleased.

  The natives stand in great awe of these cattle; and for this reason, are excessively timid in crossing the island, preferring rather to sail round to an opposite village in their canoes.

  Tonoi abounded in bullock stories; most of which, by the by, had a spice of the marvelous. The following is one of these.

  Once upon a time, he was going over the hills with a brother—now no more—when a great bull came bellowing out of a wood, and both took to their heels. The old chief sprang into a tree; his companion, flying in an opposite direction, was pursued, and in the very act of reaching up to a bough, trampled under foot. The unhappy man was then gored—tossed in the air—and finally run away with on the bull’s horns. More dead than alive, Tonoi waited till all was over, and then made the best of his way home. The neighbors, armed with two or three muskets, at once started to recover, if possible, his unfortunate brother’s remains. At nightfall, they returned without discovering any trace of him; but the next morning, Tonoi himself caught a glimpse of a bullock, marching across the mountain’s brow, with a long dark object borne aloft on his horns.

  Having referred to Vancouver’s attempts to colonize the islands with useful quadrupeds, we may as well say something concerning his success upon Hawaii, one of the largest islands in the whole Polynesian Archipelago; and which gives the native name to the well known cluster named by Cook in honor of Lord Sandwich.

  Hawaii is some one hundred leagues in circuit, and covers an area of over four thousand square miles. Until within a few years past, its interior was almost unknown, even to the inhabitants themselves, who, for ages, had been prevented from wandering thither, by certain strange superstitions. Pelee, the terrific goddess of the volcanoes Mouna Roa and Mouna Kea,*2 was supposed to guard all the passes to the extensive valleys lying round their base. There are legends of her having chased with streams of fire several impious adventurers. Near Hilo,3 a jet-black cliff is shown, with the vitreous torrent apparently pouring over into the sea: just as it cooled after one of these supernatural eruptions.

  To these inland valleys, and the adjoining hillsides, which are clothed in the most luxuriant vegetation, Vancouver’s bullocks soon wandered; and unmolested for a long period, multiplied in vast herds.

  Some twelve or fifteen years ago, the natives, losing sight of their superstitions, and learning the value of the hides in commerce, began hunting the creatures that wore them; but being very fearful and awkward in a business so novel, their success was small; and it was not until the arrival of a party of Spanish hunters, men regularly trained to their calling upon the plains of California, that the work of slaughter was fairly begun.

  The Spaniards were showy fellows, tricked out in gay blankets, leggins worked with porcupine quills, and jingling spurs. Mounted upon trained Indian mares, these heroes pursued their prey up to the very base of the burning mountains; making the profoundest solitudes ring with their shouts, and flinging the lasso under the very nose of the vixen goddess Pelee. Hilo, a village upon the coast, was their place of resort; and thither flocked roving whites from all the islands of the group. As pupils of the dashing Spaniards, many of these dissipated fellows, quaffing too freely of the stirrup-cup, and riding headlong after the herds, when they reeled in the saddle, were unhorsed and killed.

  This was about the year 1835, when the present king, Tammahamaha III.4 was a lad. With royal impudence, laying claim to the sole property of the cattle, he was delighted with the idea of receiving one of every two silver dollars paid down for their hides; so, with no thought for the future, the work of extermination went madly on. In three years’ time, eighteen thousand bullocks were slain, almost entirely upon the single island of Hawaii.

  The herds being thus nearly destroyed, the sagacious young prince imposed a rigorous “taboo” upon the few surviving cattle, which was to remain in force for ten years. During this period—not yet expired—all hunting is forbidden, unless directly authorized by the king.

  The massacre of the cattle extended to the hapless goats. In one year, three thousand of their skins were sold to the merchants of Honolulu, fetching a quartilia, or a shilling sterling apiece.

  After this digression, it is time to run on after Tonoi and the Yankee.

  CHAPTER 55

  A HUNTING RAMBLE WITH ZEKE

  At the foot of the mountain, a steep path went up among rocks and clefts, mantled with verdure. Here and there were green gulfs, down which it made one giddy to peep. At last we gained an overhanging, wooded shelf of land which crowned the heights; and along this, the path, well shaded, ran like a gallery.

  In every direction, the scenery was enchanting. There was a low, rustling breeze; and below, in the vale, the leaves were quivering; the sea lay, blue and serene, in the distance; and inland the surface swelled up, ridge after ridge, and peak upon peak, all bathed in the Indian haze of the Tropics, and dreamy to look upon. Still valleys, leagues away, reposed in the deep shadows of the mountains; and here and there, water-falls lifted up their voices in the solitude. High above all, and central, the “Marling-spike” lifted its finger. Upon the hillsides, small groups of bullocks were seen; some quietly browsing; others slowly winding into the valleys.

  We went on, directing our course for a slope of the hills, a mile or two further, where the nearest bullocks were seen.

  We were cautious in keeping to windward of them; their sense of smell and hearing being, like those of all wild creatures, exceedingly acute.

  As there was no knowing that we might not surprise some other kind of game in the coverts through which we were passing, we crept along warily.

  The wild hogs of the island are uncommonly fierce; and as they often attack the natives, I could not help following Tonoi’s example of once in a while peeping in under the foliage. Frequent retrospective glances also, served to assure me that our retreat was not cut off.

  As we rounded a clump of bushes, a noise behind them, like the crackling of dry branches, broke the stillness. In an instant, Tonoi’s hand was on a bough, ready for a spring, and Zeke’s finger touched the trigger of his piece. Again the stillness was broken; and thinking it high time to get ready, I brought my musket to my shoulder.

  “Look sharp!” cried the Yankee; and dropping on one knee, he brushed the twigs aside. Presently, off went his piece; and with a wild snort, a black, bristling boar—his cherry red lip curled up by two glittering tusks—dashed, unharmed, across the path, and crashed through the opposite thicket. I saluted him with a charge as he disappeared; but not the slightest notice was taken of the civility.

  By this time, Tonoi, the illustrious descendant of the Bishops of Imeeo, was twenty feet from the ground. “Aramai! come down, you old fool!” cried the Yankee; “the pesky critter’s on t’other side of the island afore this.

  “I rayther guess,” he continued, as we began reloading, “that we’ve spoiled sport by firing at that ere ’tarnal1 hog. Them bullocks’ heard the racket, and is flinging their tails about now on the keen jump. Quick, Paul, and let’s climb that rock yonder, and see if so be there’s any in sight.”

  But none were to be seen, except at such a distance that they looked like ants.

  As evening was now at hand, my companion proposed our returning home forthwith; and then, after a sound night’s rest, starting in the morning upon a good day’s hunt with the whole force of the plantation.

  Following another path, in descending into the valley, we passed through some nobly wooded land on the face of the mountain.

  One variety of tree particularly attracted my attention. The dark mossy stem, over seventy feet high, was perfectly branchless for many feet above the ground, when it shot out in broad boughs laden with lustrous leaves of the deepest green. And all round the lower part of the trunk, thin, slablike buttresses of bark, perfectly smooth, and radiating from a common center, projected along the ground for at least two yards. From below, these natural props tapered upward until gradually blended with the trunk itself. There were signs of the wild cattle having sheltered themselves behind them. Zeke called this the canoe-tree; as in old times it supplied the navies of the Kings of Tahiti. For canoe-building, the wood is still used. Being extremely dense, and impervious to worms, it is very durable.

  Emerging from the forest, when half-way down the hillside, we came upon an open space, covered with ferns and grass, over which a few lonely trees were casting long shadows in the setting sun. Here, a piece of ground some hundred feet square, covered with weeds and brambles, and sounding hollow to the tread, was inclosed by a ruinous wall of stones. Tonoi said it was an almost forgotten burial-place, of great antiquity, where no one had been interred since the islanders had been Christians. Sealed up in dry, deep vaults, many a dead heathen was lying here.

  Curious to prove the old man’s statement, I was anxious to get a peep at the catacombs; but hermetically overgrown2 with vegetation, as they were, no aperture was visible.

  Before gaining the level of the valley, we passed by the site of a village, near a water-course, long since deserted. There was nothing but stone walls, and rude dismantled foundations of houses, constructed of the same material. Large trees and brush-wood were growing rankly among them.

  I asked Tonoi how long it was since any one had lived here. “Me, tammaree (boy)—plenty kannaker (men) Martair,” he replied. “Now, only poor pehe kannaka (fishermen) left—me born here.”

  Going down the valley, vegetation of every kind presented a different aspect from that of the high land.

  Chief among the trees of the plain on this island, is the “Ati,” large and lofty, with a massive trunk, and broad, laurel-shaped leaves. The wood is splendid. In Tahiti, I was shown a narrow, polished plank, fit to make a cabinet for a king. Taken from the heart of the tree, it was of a deep, rich scarlet, traced with yellow veins, and in some places clouded with hazel.

  In the same grove with the regal “Ati,” you may see the beautiful flowering “Hotoo;” its pyramid of shining leaves diversified with numberless small, white blossoms.

  Planted with trees as the valley is, almost throughout its entire length, I was astonished to observe so very few which were useful to the natives: not one in a hundred was a cocoa-nut or bread-fruit tree.

  But here Tonoi again enlightened me. In the sanguinary religious hostilities which ensued upon the conversion to Christianity of the first Pomaree, a war party from Tahiti destroyed (by “girdling” the bark) entire groves of these invaluable trees. For some time afterward, they stood stark and leafless in the sun; sad monuments of the fate which befell the inhabitants of the valley.

  CHAPTER 56

  MUSQUITOES

  The night following the hunting trip, Long Ghost and myself, after a valiant defense, had to fly the house on account of the musquitoes.

  And here I can not avoid relating a story, rife among the natives, concerning the manner in which these insects were introduced upon the island.

  Some years previous, a whaling captain, touching at an adjoining bay, got into difficulty with its inhabitants, and at last carried his complaint before one of the native tribunals; but receiving no satisfaction, and deeming himself aggrieved, he resolved upon taking signal revenge. One night, he towed a rotten old water-cask ashore, and left it in a neglected Taro patch, where the ground was warm and moist. Hence the musquitoes.1

  I tried my best to learn the name of this man: and hereby do what I can to hand it down to posterity. It was Coleman—Nathan Coleman.2 The ship belonged to Nantucket.

  When tormented by the musquitoes, I found much relief in coupling the word “Coleman” with another of one syllable, and pronouncing them together energetically.

  The doctor suggested a walk to the beach, where there was a long, low shed tumbling to pieces, but open lengthwise to a current of air which he thought might keep off the musquitoes. So thither we went.

  The ruin partially sheltered a relic of times gone by, which, a few days after, we examined with much curiosity. It was an old war-canoe, crumbling to dust. Being supported by the same rude blocks upon which, apparently, it had years before been hollowed out, in all probability it had never been afloat.

  Outside, it seemed originally stained of a green color, which, here and there, was now changed into a dingy purple. The prow terminated in a high, blunt beak; both sides were covered with carving; and upon the stern was something which Long Ghost maintained to be the arms of the royal House of Pomaree. The device had an heraldic look, certainly—being two sharks with the talons of hawks clawing a knot left projecting from the wood.

  The canoe was at least forty feet long, about two wide, and four deep. The upper part—consisting of narrow planks laced together with cords of sinnate—had in many places fallen off, and lay decaying upon the ground. Still, there were ample accommodations left for sleeping; and in we sprang—the doctor into the bow, and I, into the stern. I soon fell asleep; but waking suddenly, cramped in every joint from my constrained posture, I thought, for an instant, that I must have been prematurely screwed down in my coffin.

  Presenting my compliments to Long Ghost, I asked how it fared with him.

  “Bad enough,” he replied, as he tossed about in the outlandish rubbish lying in the bottom of our couch. “Pah! how these old mats smell!”

  As he continued talking in this exciting strain for some time, I at last made no reply, having resumed certain mathematical reveries to induce repose. But finding the multiplication-table of no avail, I summoned up a grayish image of chaos in a sort of sliding fluidity, and was just falling into a nap on the strength of it, when I heard a solitary and distinct buzz. The hour of my calamity was at hand. One blended hum, the creature darted into the canoe like a small sword-fish; and I out of it.

  Upon getting into the open air, to my surprise, there was Long Ghost, fanning himself wildly with an old paddle. He had just made a noiseless escape from a swarm, which had attacked his own end of the canoe.

  It was now proposed to try the water; so a small fishing canoe, hauled up near by, was quickly lanched; and paddling a good distance off, we dropped overboard the native contrivance for an anchor—a heavy stone, attached to a cable of braided bark. At this part of the island, the encircling reef was close to the shore, leaving the water within smooth, and extremely shallow.

  It was a blessed thought! We knew nothing till sunrise, when the motion of our aquatic cot awakened us. I looked up, and beheld Zeke wading toward the shore, and towing us after him by the bark cable. Pointing to the reef, he told us we had had a narrow escape.

  It was true enough; the water-sprites had rolled our stone out of its noose, and we had floated away.

  CHAPTER 57

  THE SECOND HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS

  Fair dawned, over the hills of Martair, the jocund morning of our hunt.

  Every thing had been prepared for it overnight; and, when we arrived at the house, a good breakfast was spread by Shorty: and old Tonoi was bustling about like an innkeeper. Several of his men, also, were in attendance, to accompany us with calabashes of food; and, in case we met with any success, to officiate as bearers of burdens, on our return.

  Apprised, the evening previous, of the meditated sport, the doctor had announced his willingness to take part therein.

  Now, subsequent events made us regard this expedition as a shrewd device of the Yankee’s. Once get us off on a pleasure trip, and with what face could we afterward refuse to work? Beside, he enjoyed all the credit of giving us a holyday. Nor did he omit assuring us, that, work or play, our wages were all the while running on.

  A dilapidated old musket of Tonoi’s, was borrowed for the doctor. It was exceedingly short and heavy, with a clumsy lock, which required a strong finger to pull the trigger. On trying the piece, by firing at a mark, Long Ghost was satisfied that it could not fail of doing execution: the charge went one way, and he the other.

  Upon this, he endeavored to negotiate an exchange of muskets with Shorty; but the Cockney was proof against his blandishments; at last he intrusted his weapon to one of the natives to carry for him.

  Marshaling our forces, we started for the head of the valley; near which, a path ascended to a range of high land, said to be a favorite resort of the cattle.

  Shortly after gaining the heights, a small herd, some way off, was perceived entering a wood. We hurried on; and, dividing our party, went in after them, at four different points; each white man followed by several natives.

  I soon found myself in a dense covert; and, after looking round, was just emerging into a clear space, when I heard a report, and a bullet knocked the bark from a tree near by. The same instant, there was a trampling and crashing; and five bullocks, nearly abreast, broke into view across the opening, and plunged right toward the spot where myself and three of the islanders were standing.

  They were small, black, vicious-looking creatures; with short, sharp horns, red nostrils, and eyes like coals of fire. On they came—their dark woolly heads hanging down.