B06 
B'ORESl AN£) oTHEAM. 
it^BC 23, 1899. 
Then came my turn. In the strict order of rank and 
following in the most formal fashion the intricacies of 
the ancient Samoan custom, each of the famiHes of the 
village sent its representative to my veranda to give 
and to receive the presents which were to be inter- 
changed. In the case of Samoan gifts, and they arc 
constantly making a parade of giving, there is not the 
slightest "element of generosity. Every gift must be re- 
paid in kind and one makes public concession of being 
very niggardly unless the return far exceeds the value of 
the gift. By judiciously lavish generosity a Samoan 
family may very readily squander uself into a condition 
of extreme affluence. The faithful Tanoa was my per- 
sonal body-guard and speech-maker and guide in gen- 
eral through the mysteries of Samoan conduct, all this 
with unwavering cheerfulness year in and year out for 
a shilling a day. He was greatly concerned that I should 
come through the Christmas- gifts with credit to him, and 
he had many long conferences with me as to the proper 
amount of my return presents. After he had suggested 
what in his judgment was a really creditable gift to 
come from me, I made a bold stroke for the reputation 
of being free-handed by calmly doubhng Tanoa's e.sti- 
mate. Even at that it did not bear very heavily. The 
full schedule of the return gift was this: One tin of 
salmon, one tin of corned beef, one pint bottle of kero- 
sene, eight ship biscuits, running that number to the 
pound: one box of matches, two cigars, the latter being 
Mexican rope at $1.75 the hundred. In the presents for 
the two chiefs and the principal talking man of the 
village I included an outing shirt for the men and calico 
enough to make a Mother liubbard for the women. It's 
always just as well to pay some consideration to rank 
even' though it be bare foot. In the case of Chief Patu, 
my freakish Talolo's father, this addition led to a 
domestic tornado. Salatemu happened to be Patu's wife 
at that time, and naturally claimed the dress pattern. 
One of the other Mrs. Patu grabbed the goods and held 
onto them on the plea that she was the chief's wife also. 
Patu couldn't get the woman to restore the calico, and 
was forced to make it up to Salatemu by giving her his 
outing shirt, which thereafter she wore on all occasions 
of ceremony. 
The presents which came to me were assorted enough 
to stock a museum. There were models of houses and 
models of canoes; there Avcrc mats and strips of native 
cloth made from bark; there were baskets and fans and 
clubs and shell hsh hooks and dancing skirts and shell 
necklaces and boars' tusk armlets. Tanoa had done his 
work well, for I had told him that this was the kmd of 
thing I preferred in my Christmas presents, and he had 
evidently issued orders to that effect in the dense mcom- 
prehensi'bility of that native life which seems so open 
to the view. 
There was a wearisome sameness in each presentation. 
The ceremony took place on the veranda, for everj' man, 
woman and child had dressed for the feast in a double 
allowance of cocoanut oil, which so glistened on theu" 
skins as almost to suggest that they had been buttered. 
That would be fatal to furniture. I could never get the 
oil out, and it might damage many 'a white dress or the 
dress uniforms of the naval officers on their visits of 
ceremony. As it was, and even with the extra precaution 
of placing double thicknesses of mats on the veranda 
floor, the oil struck through and left great grease stains 
which only slowly wore out in the rainy season. In the 
order of their social state each household called in turn, 
the heads of the house mountaing to the veranda, the 
children remaining outside the gate of the compound, 
where they found scats on the big fragment of the mast 
of the wrecked Trenton. First came the compliments 
and the proper wishes for the day. Next came a long 
rigmarole about the great love of this family in par- 
ticular for me, and a long statement of reverses and 
poverty which would have done well in a bankruptcy 
schedule. None the less the family had got together, so 
the speaker sadly said, a very few Avorthless trifles that 
had no value except to show their willingness to do the 
proper thing. They were not worthy, he continued, to 
be brought into my presence, and he would order them to 
be laid at the far end of the veranda, where my ser- 
vants could easily sweep them out with the rest of the 
rubbish. It is impossible to exaggerate the professed 
humilitv which Samoan etiquette prescribes; everything 
given must be scandalously belittled just as everything 
received must be lauded to the skies. As a race, the 
Samoans are as vain as peacocks, and as proud as Luci- 
fer, that only adds to the incongruity of their haughty 
attitude, while the stream of abject self-abasement is 
flowing over their lips in set and ancient phrases. At 
the proper point in the speech one of the boys brings in 
the gifts and makes a show of acting w^hen he throws 
them carelessly down at the far end of the veranda. 
Here is where Tanoa shows himself a treasure, for 
he is of the orator rank; and knows thoroughly every one 
of the proper things to do. It's all acting, but Tanoa 
keeps a perfectly straight face, which is something that 
I cannot always do. Without Tanoa's constant _ care I 
should commit a hundred social slips a day, which the 
' Samoans would never forgive, for they never make any 
allowances for difference in customs. It has happened in 
the islands that some who harp upon their intimate 
acquaintance with the native customs and attempt to 
follow out by their unaided efforts all the niceties_ of 
ceremony more than anything else for the sake of im- 
pressing the globe-trotters who once a month get their 
six hours in Apia as the foundation for another chapter 
on Samoa— it has happened that such people have regu- 
larly committed solecisms which have made them either 
scandalous or ridiculous, and all for lack of a com- 
petent orator as master of barbaric ceremonies. As these 
people were absolutely in private life, their slips made 
no difference to anybody, but in the official circle it was 
quite necessary to have a capable speech-maker in order 
to avoid such errors. , „ . . , 1 r 
Tanoa advances to the heap of offerings with def- 
erential looks, and makes a show of knitting his muscles. 
Then putting his arms about the pile, he makes a vain 
bluff at lifting it, and failing to stir it. It's all bluff; the 
other boy has just been carryin.a' these things around 
without difficulty, and throwing them down as though 
they were no more than feather weight, but it's part of 
the game that Tanoa knows so well and does so perfectly. 
Failing to lift the weighty heap, he lifts each article to 
his head in formal reverence and sets each forth in 
order. When they are all lined out to make the greatest 
show possible, he rushes out into the front yard, which, 
according to the Samoan custom, is the place for all the 
ceremonies of my house to be conducted; in fact Tanoa 
begrudged every inch that I tried to have for m.y poor 
struggling flower beds— he said that flowers were all very 
well in their way, but so long as he was my orator it was 
his duty to protect against any curtailment of the space 
where he could make his speeches, and where other 
orators could stand when listening to his eloquent re- 
marks, and making their p-roperly subservient replies. In 
effect, if flowers were wanted in that part of the com- 
pound, he would undertake to till the bill with the 
flowers of speech. What with the barren soil and the 
salt air and the pigs and my orator, that flower garden 
had its foes. In tones that could be heard half a mile 
without any difficulty whatever, my good Tanoa pro- 
claimed to the listening village that Patu and the Sale- 
patu had endowed me with such and such precious 
articles, citing each by name and number of pieces with 
some word of compliment which could never be made 
too ful.some for Samoan heating. All these goods were 
now on the veranda and the floor so sagged under the 
weight that he had ordered one of the house boys to 
run and set a strut beneath to prevent it from break- 
ing through. That was a .stroke of genius on Tanoa's 
part, and made him famous among the orators of distant 
communities even on other islands. 
Returning then to the veranda, Tanoa brought me the 
best appearing of the articles thus published and passed 
it to me in order that I might take formal possession of 
my present by raising it to my head. This done, Tanoa 
returned the specimen to the display of the presents, and 
was then at liberty to make a speech setting forth the 
unfortunate povertj' of the house and the insignificance 
of the family of which he, a common man and of no 
account, was the poor makeshift of an orator. While 
humility was the keynote of this oration, Tanoa so 
managed to couch his humility in grandiloquence as to 
make it most amusing to note the irreconcilability of 
theme with manner or known facts. This led up to the 
presentation of the gifts which had been prepared and 
were arrayed in convenient piles just around the corner 
of the veranda. Each tin can was announced in set 
terms, and when it came to the cigars. Tanoa chopped 
the end off each, - scratciied a match on the box which 
went with them, lit both cigars and passed one to the 
man and the other to the woman, for there is in Samoa 
no monopoly of the use of tobacco. As soon as the re- 
turn gifts were in hand, the visitors scuttled away with 
no waste of time. On the village green just without 
the hedge of my compound the return gift was pro- 
claimed by the village orator, and the next family was 
at liberty to present its gifts and receive the return. 
• By the time all these long ceremonies were over, and 
it is to be said that no length of ceremony ever seems 
tedious to a Samoan, the day was well advanced. All 
night long the pit ovens had been filled with bonfires of 
hard M'oods, tended all the night by reliefs of men. At 
dawn the rock lining of the pits and the cobbles Avhich 
had been thrown into the fire were so .snapping hot that a 
shcUful of water thrown upon them after the coals had 
been scraped out would haA'e served like the port fire 
that explodes a mine. Hastily the viands already pre- 
pared for cooking were heaped in this crater of hot rocks 
in wrappers of green leaves, and when each oven was full 
it was closed by shoveling earth on top of everything 
to a height of several feet. When the gift ceremonies 
were finished there was a distinct flavor in the air as of 
cooking, and when the savor of the viands has made its 
way through the overlying heap of earth it is usually 
held to he a sign that the meats are prettj' nearly done. 
With the opening of the ovens this account of a 
Samoan Christmas may fitly close. The rest would be 
but a chronicle of things to eat which differ in no par- 
ticular from the daily fare of this savage folk, and 
therefore do not stamp the holiday meal as distinctive in 
^1^y way. . Lt.ewet.l.a Pierce Churchill. 
My Christmas Box. 
On the Avindward side of a steep mountain up in 
Monroe county, Pa., near the Pike county line, and still 
nearer to my affections, stands a four-room cottage, quite 
in need of its second coat of whitCAvash. A visit there by 
even a careful observer of the industries, successes and 
failures of our fellow man would most naturally produce 
the thought, what does the owner of this place do for a 
living? 
My Christmas box from there would suggest the 
"sportsman farmer." The thought that prompted its being 
sent proves surely a friend. My first recollection is of my 
faithful guide. As the latter he has been to me essential; 
as the friend, I fear not fully appreciated; as the sports- 
man, by aU odds a natural one, but as a farmer, an un- 
knoAvn quantity, until my box came. Since then, a real 
farmer of the old school, for modern methods and inven- 
tions have provided nothing for the easy cultivation of 
rocks, roots, stumps and rhododendron thickets. 
Henry, my sporting farmer friend and guide, is a de- 
cidedly crude individual, little given, I fear, to "class 
meetings" and the "study of Wesley"; the trend of his 
mind is not of the spiritual ; the things on his little 
patch of earth are conundrtims of a practical sort, 
sufficient for his keenest thoughts. This condition of 
mind, however, is entirely and of necessity natural. The 
man Avho could plough and pray the same '"moon" on 
that farm is not of our generation; the early Quakers 
would have let go their heavenward pilot wheels, had they 
settled in Pike county. I, one time at the close of one 
of Henry's outbursts of "speed" in venting his feelings 
over an escaping grouse that got its start in his neigh- 
borhood, remonstrated with him, and suggested he "get 
religion." By Avay of argument, he pointed to his small 
clearings, his high stone fences, his dilapidated and 
broken plough, his near-sighted near ox, his broken- 
horned off one, and asked me, where in in this happy 
land to plant religion. 
This, hoAvever, is not meant to be a story of a Pike 
county farmer ; it is meant to be of a Christmas box, and 
the effect it had on my mind; yet, to know the farmer is 
to get the cause ; to read of the latter, the effect is given. 
Knowing Henry as I know him enhances the value to me 
of my famous Christmas box; it speaks so of a thought- 
fultiess and modesty born in man ("not much, but the 
best I have I send to you") ; it reminds one of patience 
and toil, of endurance, of a manly, sturdy nature, al- 
Avays to be prized, whether found in the forest or ball 
room, of a "set principle," that, could it be mounted 
like a dead bird, would be a suggestive ornament for some 
of our legislative halls. 
Inside that four-room cottage can be found the patient 
and tried Mrs. Henry and her three chubby boys; her 
contact with this busy world in which we live is nat- 
urally very limited; even the railroads have shunned the 
mountain on whch she has chosen her home, and the 
stranger who passes her threshold is either "lost, strayed 
or stolen," but in any case AVOifld be hospitably received 
and welcomed. 
Such is the isolation of this home, surely causing a 
lonely existence, and this being the case, does it, or did 
it, ever occur to us as men, and as sportsmen, how much 
our annual visit means to that backwoods fireside, how 
to them our stay is like the touch or gUmpse of another 
world, how our coming is talked over while yet the leaves 
are green and the katydids are just beginning to chatter, 
and how Ave are still the subject for family and neigh- 
borly gossip when Henry's troubles are covered with 
snow, and stone fence could be built with his cider, and 
the game has left the barrens and gone into winter 
quarters? Do we remember them after the guns have 
been cleaned and put away, and the dog lies curled up 
by the open grate, and our children are listening for the 
tinkle of the bells, announcing another "Christmas 
morn," filling all our hearts with gladness and thanks- 
giving, and causing us to forget our friends on the moun- 
tain side? I fear memory pours itself into a funnel in 
order to concentrate itself into a small given space at 
home. 
We use our Henrys at the rate of "two per" ; they use 
us as a household word. My Christmas box has con- 
vinced me of the generosity of their natures, and the 
frailties and natural Aveaknesses of mine. 
I didn't get to see Henry last fall, and ray Christmas 
box coming just the same, convinces me that they missed 
the "fireside" part of my Aasit. That box, which wiU 
always be recalled with such appetizing pleasure, con- 
tained a peck of apples (and Henry has no apples, but is 
an excellent guide), a peck of beets (some of them 
shoAving the struggle they had getting through the rocks), 
a peck of_ potatoes (slightly disfigured), a big jar of 
mangos (simply perfect; they grow above ground), nine- 
teen ears of pop-corn (perfect ears ; they also grow in 
the air), three rabbits (killed in bed), three ruffed 
grouse (killed either at sunup or sundown,_ in a buck- 
wheat patch or on a frost grape vine, while in the act of 
feeding). Henry is above all things a good shot in the 
uncertain light of awakening morn or declining day.. 
This generous box of good things (always the best I 
have, I send you), representing as it did part of that 
year's yield, representing early and late hours of eager 
watchfulness, makes us all glad to know that away on 
that mountain side we Avere in their minds and in their 
hearts. A stony road eight miles to the raihvay to send 
my box had to be traA'eled behind a sIoav animal of an 
uncertain age, and retraced, but in that box, so carefully 
packed and carried so far, is "the best I have, I send to 
you." Thos. Elmer. 
Elizabeth, N. J., December. 
Christmas Chat. 
CuARLESTOwJC, N. H., Dec. 14— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The shortened days of the closing j'ear have 
been lately reminding me that it was some time since I 
had a friendly chat with my fellow contributors to 
Forest and Stream^ and the announcement of the death 
of Antler in the current number, received this morning, 
recalls the fact that I have lately turned over the seventy- 
sixth page of mj' earthly calendar, and that it be- 
hooves me to "take time by the forelock," if I have any- 
thing more to say, and to send my greetings and wishes 
for a "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" to those 
who still remain to enjoy the weekly visits of what my 
better half calls "my other Bible," and which, by the 
way, she enjoys nearly as much as I do myself. 
Your leading editorial on "Wind Farms" opens the 
question on which I have been thinking of writing for 
some time past, very com'^eniently for my purpose, and 
that is, the enormous amount of misinformation dis- 
tributed to the public, not only by the daily press, but 
the publications of a more pretentious character, and I 
Avas particularly delighted a short time since by our 
friend Cheney's "expose" of the erroneous and absurd 
statements published in regard to the introduction of 
American fishes in Europe. Had Mr. Cheney known the 
real standing of the paper from Avhich he took the article 
on which he commented, as Avell as I do, he would not 
have been so much surprised as he appeared to be in 
finding the article in its columns, for it has long been 
knoAvn among the older members of the engineering pro- 
fession by the simple cognomen of "The Unscientific" ! 
I took it for a time myself, fifty years ago, when I Avas a 
young man, and engineering literature Avas in its infancy, 
but long since dropped it as containing nothing re- 
liable or valuable for my purposes. 
The next article of the same sort Avhich struck me Avas 
Mr. Hastings" amusing commentary on "The Consul- 
General's Moose," and to these I may add, as unnoted, 
the A'arious accounts Avhich appear weekly of enormous 
moose from the woods of Maine and New Brunswick, to 
say nothing of those Avhich come from Alaska, but which 
seem to be somewhat more reliable. The 2,000-pound 
myth of the grizzly bear seems to have died out in favor 
of the 1,600 or 1,800 pound moose, and that will prob- 
ably vanish in time. It is a pretty good sized carriage 
horse that will Aveigh 1,200 pounds, and 1,800 will do for 
a fair ox, so the readers of these fanciful stories may im- 
agine the size of the game accordingly. 
I ahvays believe, or like to, all I read in Forest and 
Stream, and A^ery seldom find anything which I cannot 
easily digest and enjoy, but that yarn recently about the 
trip " to the Mad River Mountains rather taxes my 
credulity. Such changes in climate and fertility as are 
there described, in crossing one summit, from utter 
sterility to a green and flourishing valley, may occur in 
