164 
FOREST .AND STREAM, 
[Feb. 28, 1903. 
it seems as though your shot had awakened an anny. 
See that beautiful creature start, nuking two or three 
convulsive leaps, then give up, stagger, and tumble down 
into that awful chasm at your feet. 
A sickening -feeling comes as you feel sure that, after 
al! your toil and good shot, your specimen will be torn 
and knocked to shreds before the carcass finds a resting 
place somewhere amongst the jagged rocks below. 
The climb down, your joy at the discovery that, after 
all, your fears were groundless, the supper at the camp 
fire ; the contemplative pipe, as you review the incidents 
of the day, and in vision see that superb head and horns 
mounted and in the library at home. 
Home? Yes, home. Home is best. I love the chil- 
dren's good-night kiss, the books, the cheerful fire, the 
evening talk with wife and grown sons; that old chair in 
V'hich grandfather sat when I was a boy, and father 
when I was a young man; this old room with all its 
memories, sad and sweet — every object in it seems to 
have a personality and to be a personal friend. 
My poor old dog — you are glad to see me home. Com- 
panion of so many walks and wanderings over fields 
and through woods and meadows. You recall eariy 
mornings in stubble fields, wbirring wings and quick, 
double reports of shotgun, and "good shots," and dinners 
with boon companions, where Mr. "Bob While" was the 
piece de rcsislauce, with a glass of Burgundy, old and 
red and mellow — ihe only wine worthy to accompany 
you. 
Yes, son, I have had my vacation. I am glad that I 
had it, and 1 am still more glad to be at home. 
More Frills and Further Furbelows 
Without the tabu life in Samoa would have been far 
less tolerable. I used to sit on my veranda and look at 
my own and personal tabu with unflagging interest, for it 
was as easy to see as though it were built of rock and 
rough-cast and existed as a solid physical entity. It was 
only a moral obligation, but it was there none the less 
positively for all that, and the eye could see it distinctly. 
Physically the Consulate and its compound were marked 
oft by a fence and hedges which cut it out from the town 
green or malae of Vaiala. Outside these physical ob- 
stacles, and far more potent, was drawn my tabu at 
such a distance (the measure of the longest reach of s 
single arm), as woild prevent any acquisitive hand from 
reaching through the slats of the picket fence and pluck- 
ing anv blossom from the few straggling plants which 
were able 10 maintain some sort of growth in the salty 
gusts of the ncver-rnding trade wind. 
I had seen ihe tabu drnwn about the premises and I 
never failed to admire and at the same time appreciate 
its force. It had been set about me by Le Patu, the 
chief of Vailala, who had the power to make such a pro- 
ceeding efi'cacious upon any piece of ground, on any 
movable property, even on any person found and bemg 
•within the w cU-niarked confines of his chiefly sway. It 
was simple in the extreme. In the first days of my resi- 
dence, through a talking man, I called the chief into con- 
ference. The proceedings were conducted in strict ac- 
cordance with the Samoan etiquette belonging to such con- 
ventions of the truly great. The resources of my house- 
hold were drawn upon to prepare the bowl of kava for 
the chief to drink, and after the formal quaffing of the 
beverage the further rites of hospitality involved the 
presentation from my larder of a tin of corned beef and 
four hard tack. When Le Patu had unhesitatingly incor- 
porated unto himself this slight two-pound snack, we 
were ready for business, just as fomially as in our legis- 
lative bodies business may proceed after the chaplain 
has done his little stunt. I told the chief that it was es- 
sential to my comfort that my island neighbors should 
keep off the premises except upon invitation. I went on, 
and it was really unnecessary under the circumstances, 
to explain that I was not in fear of having things stolen 
or that I doubted the probity of his people ; my sole ob- 
ject, as I informed him, was to secure privacy. All the 
apology for my request was in truth immaterial, for my 
experience with the Samoans convinced me that they do 
not steal, not at least in relation to such movables as are 
regarded by them as having the nature of property. The 
distinction is a very valid one in Samoan custom. A 
single instance will serve to elucidate it. Any Samoan 
visitor to my cook-house would feel entitled to eat as 
much as he pleased out of an open tm of beef or sal- 
mon, for it is food and not subject to individual owner- 
ship. My experience is consistent that the amount which 
any Samoan, high or low, old or young, might be pleased 
to eat out any such food within his reach would be 
bounded by the well scraped sides of the tin. Yet if 
there were such a tin of food on the shelves, but un- 
opened, it would be recognized as property, my property 
until I had had it opened, and therefore not to be^ 
touched. . , . . TT 
At any rate Le Patu took it all in good part. He 
could recognize, even if he could not sympathize with 
my desire to have my real estate to myself. It was all 
perfectly simple. "E lelei," he said; "'tis well; I shall 
place upon thee the tabu of the sea and the tabu of the 
shore and the tabu of the thunder." It was really most 
terrifying, this invocation of the powers, the majesty and 
might— and all the hoodoos— of earth, air, fire and water 
tc serve the purposes of a "Keep Off the Grass" sign. 
Indeed, I almost fell like a lamb led to the sacrifice, and 
could sympathize with a burnt offering. "Thou shaft be 
Sa," he concluded. Sa means holy, and so far as the 
jurisdiction of Le Patu extended I must be considered 
holy from that time forth. I'rom th- brook of the 
Fu'esa to the fence which divided Litia Coe's premises 
from the British Consulate at Mataulu Point my holi- 
ness extended. Even that limited holiness is something 
in these davs of carelessness. 
Having settled my personal holiness and the compre- 
hensiveness of the tabu, the rest was easy. Within a few 
minutes of the departure of the complaisant chief there 
appeared upon the malae the figure of Manongiamanu, 
whose name being translated means the Perfume of 
Birds, the head tulafale and chief orator of not only 
Vaiala but he whole Vaimaunga district as well. He 
wore his stiffest and showiest lavalava of tapa; he car- 
ried the six-foot rod of his office and the flyflapper, 
which was an equal part of his professional regalia Out 
in the broad sunKght he stood and emitted one long and 
not unmusical cry. Tanoa in my cook-house shoved his 
frying pan over to a cold lid of the stove, caught up his 
rod and flyflapper and took the attitude of a correspond- 
ing statue in the middle of the bed of radishes behind the 
Consulate and separated from the malae by a low hedge. 
There they stood in a sun glare hot enough to curl their 
skin up at the edges and kept the proper poise of high 
oflacials who weigh well their words. This long wait is 
a strict requirement of Samoan etiquette. From the 
houses the people strolled out with floor mats and found 
seats upon the ground under the shade of the fringe of 
trees. Talolo, most irresponsible and carefree of mor- 
tals, accommodated himself with a seat straddlewise on 
the monument of his great-grandfather under the big 
mango tree. Then Manongiamanu made his set speech, 
declaring the tabu on all my belongings ; Tanoa made the 
formal reply; the deed was done and Tanoa could return 
to the cook-house and pick up the interrupted prepara- 
tions for dinner. After that the compound was free of 
visitors except those of such high degree as to be above 
all plain ordinary tabus, a rank which Talolo claimed for 
his own at once. But the others felt the sacredness of 
the inhibition. They might troop over the green or along 
the beach road laughing and chattering, but the moment 
they struck the outer edge of the tabu they sobered down 
and went along as demure as so many sheep. • Indeed, it 
turned out to be a little too comprehensive, for I had to 
have an amendment expressly lifting the tabu from the 
wreck relic of the Trenton's mast that lay at the foot of 
the flagpole on the beach side of the road. This was 
the favorite seat of the Vaiala children, and I did not 
wish to forego their songs and merriment in the bril- 
liant moonlight evenings. 
It was this tabu that kept little Fuatino sitting in the 
road an hour or more one morning. Long before I had 
seen the child come gaily skipping across the green turf 
behind the house and out into the roadway. When she 
suddenly checked her happy pace and plumped herself 
down in the centre of the road exactly in front of the 
gate, I gave it no attention, for there was always much 
in the doings of the island folk that seemed utterly in- 
reducible to standards of impulse with which I was 
familiar. Samoans who passed along the road gave her 
room, riders turned out for her, a procession going up 
the coast to Matafangatele escorting another new wife 
for Asi made a detour about the little figure in the sand. 
Finally the feeling of that sportive mite of a child sitting 
out there in the torrid sunlight got on my nerves. I 
woke Tanoa up, for when there was nothing in the way 
of domestic duties to busy himself with Tanoa would 
sleep on the veranda close alongside where I might he 
at work, always waiting for the occasion to arise for him 
to make a few more speeches on my account. Oh, we 
lived in a flood of oratory! 
"Tanoa e !" I asked the ever faithful attendant as soon 
as he got his eyes open, "why is that child sitting there 
so forever in the road under the sun and the wind blow- 
ing on her?" 
"Tama'ita'i e !" he replied. "The child is the girl 
Fuatino of the Vaenga Family, and forever she sits in 
the road under the sun and the wind blowing on her; I 
know not why." 
Then to the forlorn Httle figure: 
"Fuatino e ! It is forever thou art sitting in our road 
under our sun and our trade wind blowing on thee. Now 
therefore the Tama'ita'i has the will to know why it is." 
"Sefe'au," piped the childish treble. 
"Tama'ita'i e!" said Tanoa in his deeper voice; "it is 
an errand." 
"Then do, for goodness sake, find out what it is,"_I re- 
plied, for it nettled me that my inattention had subjected 
the child to so long a baking. 
With his rod and flyflapper Tanoa went out to the little 
slip of a girl with all the demeanor of one performing a 
solemn rite. For two or three minutes they spoke to- 
gether, and then Fuatino scampered off, no doubt glad to 
be released at last from her long wait. Then Tanoa in 
her place leaned upon his staff until I happened to think 
that I should give him leave to address me. Divested of 
his oratorical trimmings the errand was that the_^tutunga 
ht-rk had already been soaking long enough in the fresh 
water and in the salt and back again in the Sweetwater 
pool, and that Fa'afili and Salatemu had sent Fuatino 
to tell me that it was now time to begin the making of 
cloth. 
All this delay had been due to the tabu, which I had 
forgotten; thus it will be seen that there were some dis- 
advantages of a close season on one. That child on a 
perfectly legitimate errand had to wait my pleasure be- 
fore she could deliver her message under penalty of the 
fierce moray in the lagoon, the swarms of aitu in the 
woods and the deadly thunder. 
In the press of other cares the cloth making had 
slipped my mind. But Tanoa's announcement of the 
message which Fuatino brought from the woman of 
Vaiala reminded me that so far my explorations of the 
art and mystery of dressmaking in the jungle had come 
to a stop with no more accomplished than the securing 
of the raw material. The implements of the Samoan 
dressmaker are the axe, the club and the pot of paint. 
So far my investigations had led me no more than past 
the axe stage. With more to see I started off for the 
village, and Tanoa lent his escort to give the procedure 
the official character with which he clothed every act of 
mine. 
Across the malae and beyond the fence, in war a ram- 
part and in peace a check on pigs, we found a path that 
Avound in and out on slippery causeways between lux- 
uriant beds of broad-leaved taro, now overhung with the 
dripping sheen of the banana leaves and now a tangle for 
the feet with prickles of the fleshy leaves of the pine- 
apple. After many twists and turns of this going we 
came out upon a grassy spot surrounding the principal 
pool which, with its tributary bogs, has given to the Vaiala 
malae the name Lelepa, or "The Ponds." There was 
found assembled the womankind of Vaiala sitting at ease 
under the grateful shade of a mighty talie tree._ Then it 
dawned on me that while Fuatino had been sitting in the 
road awaiting my pleasure every wheel of Vaiala pro- 
gress had rested at a standstill pending the expression 
of my august pleasure. But when my arrival had been 
welcomed, and a clean mat had been found on which T 
might sit with the chief women of the town under the 
talie, Fa'afili lost no time in setting industry into action. 
At a word from the women and girls, even such 
a wee infant as my bullet headed doll Apikali, plunged 
into the water, wading or swimming according to the 
measure of their stature, and the waters of the pool were 
stirred into a merry froth. From the bottom were 
brought up mushy masses of pulp which, after a vigor- 
ous squeeze, were tossed from hand to hand shoreward 
and deposited in a heap on a mat upon the bank. All this 
wading and grubbing of the bottom had roiled the water 
and made it more and more difficult to find and fish up 
the pulp rolls. Finally the last girl had made her last 
plunge under the surface for one of those long stays 
under water which cause the onlooker to fear that it is 
a case of drowning. When she emerged to shake the 
water from her eyes and reported that the bottom was 
clear, Tofi had finished her reckoning and found that 
every roll of bark that had been sunk in the pool had 
been accounted for by its corresponding mass of pulp 
upon the bank. This sum total she announced in a set 
speech addressed to Fa'afili, Salatemu and myself, who 
alone sat dry upon the mats beneath the talie tree. The 
rest of the women had sought out convenient places to 
drain and were busy wringing the water out of their 
hair and dripping garments. 
This brought it around to Tanoa to make a speech, 
that being the rank and station in life to which he had 
been born. In my name he dealt out praise in some cases 
and in others reproof for the manner in which the work 
had been done. During this outpouring of oratory Tofi 
was sorting over the lumps of pulp and holding each in 
turn up to sight. Then m obedience to directions from 
Tanoa she passed the lump to one or another of the 
women who were helping her, and several piles were 
made. When all had been passed upon there was one 
heap which was composed of about half the lumps of 
pulp and included all the best. The other heaps were 
smaller and of inferior grades. When this assortment 
had been made Tanoa made yet a further speech, in 
which he said that out of my loving disposition and from 
a desire to reward merit I was graciously pleased to give 
to Fa'afili a heap of pulp containing ten rolls of bark; 
to Salatemu nine, and so on down the scale, making some 
appropriation for each of the Vaiala families. This I 
regarded as only one more instance of the ornateness of 
Samoan speech making until I was made aware that so 
far as Tanoa and the women of Vaiala were concerned 
it was all taken in earnest, for at the end of his speech 
Tofi ordered four of the girls to pick up by its corners 
the mat which held the largest pile of all and carry it at 
once to my house. 
All at once I became aware of the situation. Because 
I had gone to the forest with the party that collected the 
bark, although simply as an inquisitive outsider, the 
women of Vaiala had regarded the results as my personal 
property, had done all the work for me alone and were 
now going to be quite grateful to me for taking to myself 
rather more than half of what they had gathered and 
were accepting as a bounty from me the piles of inferior 
bark which I had assigned to them_ through my agent, 
Tanoa. He was right in what he did, they were acting 
quite in accordance with the etiquette to which they were 
born, it was I myself who was out of harmony with the 
situation. 
Tanoa was peculiarly destitute of any sense of humor 
which might have saved him from these predicaments 
into which he was forever leading me. He piously con- 
ducted all my affairs with the most scrupulous regard 
for every last nicety of Samoan etiquette. Then when 
he had landed me in some situation which was an utterly 
impossible one for me, no matter however feasible for a 
Samoan woman, the look of pained surprise that came 
over his face was indescribably killing (yet his heart 
would have been broken if I had so much as smiled") 
when I had to undo his best efforts. His heart was too 
entirely dog-like — and that is the highest degree of faith- 
fulness — ever to permit me to hurt his feelings, yet his 
situations were often positively ludicrous. I wonder 
new what he thought I was going to do with all that 
mess of pulp dumped into my house ! He ought to know 
that I knew nothing of the art which should transform it 
into the light and snowy tapa, yet that made no difference 
to him. I was entitled to precisely so much of it and 
he looked upon it as his bounden duty to see in this, as 
in everything, that all that was coming to me came. 
This tender regard for the prerogatives of the rank to 
which the Samoans agreed I was entitled was most amus- 
ingly exhibited by Tanoa on another occasion, and it was 
not until some time later that I became aware of just 
what he had done. One day the Queen, Tui Masiofo, 
came to pay a call in such solemn state as was thrown 
about her by driving up in the royal rockaway with its 
Fiji boy driver. Wishing to offer the lady's Majesty the 
honors due the precarious throne on which the United 
States were agents in keeping her unwilling husband, I 
sent Tanoa for the box of cigars. From the box he laid 
the first cigar on my work table, handed the second to 
his Queen and the third to my good Tonga. Her 
Majesty bit off the end of the cigar and I sent Tanoa for 
a light. After an interval he returned to his place_ behind 
my chair, and in the conversation I failed to notice that 
Queen Tui was having no better than a dry smoke. It 
was only when her call was finished and I saw her take 
a light from her Fijian before getting into the Rockaway 
that I recalled that Tanoa had brought no matches when 
I had dispatched him for a light. Tonga was convulsed 
with an unholy glee and it was not easy to get from her 
the explanation. Tanoa, it seemed, stuck on a point of 
etiquette. He knew that I would not dream of lighting 
the cigar which he set before me; in fact, he would have 
thought it a distinct loss of "mamalu" or the dignity of 
the position if I should by such an act put myself on the 
plane of the Samoan women in the use of tobacco. Such 
being the case he was not going to allow Tui, Masiofo 
and, queen though she was, to seem to outrank me on 
my own veranda. Therefore the queen had to postpone 
the smoke. Tonga's glee arose from the fact that she 
was a Mata'afa partisan anyway, was in Apia more as a 
hostage than anything else, and was tickled over the joke 
on the queen. While Tanoa was a Malietoa man to the 
core, yet he had been one of the party when Tui had 
gone to her own home in Rarotonga to show off her 
royal relatives and had failed so conspicuously to deliver 
the goods. _ 
