42 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jtjly 19, igo2. 
€> 
The French Cruiser's Visit. 
Somehow the French men-of-war are different. 
In Apia one could acquire a fine taste in cruisers. 
There was the still precision of the German corvettes, 
white as our own navy before war's alarms. The British 
gunboats had their individuality, there was a sort of 
atmosphere of being off on a good time aboard their black 
hulls to which German militarism does not know how to 
unbend. In times of peace at Apia one got to know 
these vessels and their officers. German cruisers were 
in the harbor for all of nine months of the year, or if 
their anchorage were empty, the muffled boom of guns out 
at sea showed that they were only out for drill. British 
cruisers sailed in and out again, and with all the un- 
certainty of their movements succeeded in making two 
or three months' stay in the year. Even American 
cruisers managed to keep just as much in the public mind 
by staying away altogether. It gave scope, this unvary- 
ing absence, for reminiscence of the last visit of the 
Mohican or the old Adams, which once made the record 
trip of fifty-nine days from Panama to Apia, or the 
Iroquois, whose last voyage started from San Francisco 
for Apia and ended in Puget Sound, after a cruise of wild 
wreck. There was always the chance of a Yankee cruiser, 
about once in so often the wiseacres on the beach had 
certain knowledge that one was coming; then the trades- 
men made combinations to purvey supplies, and inter- 
cepting letters were sent to Honolulu to establish relations 
with the coming paymaster. Prosperity was in the sight 
of everybody as the recollection ran back to memory of 
how the Yankee boys scattered money all along the beach, 
and the round gold pieces flew in store and bar 
and jingled in the pockets of the shrewd half-caste who 
has acquired a competency already by syndicating the 
industry of returning deserters, whom he hid in the bush 
until the precise moment when they became worth ten 
dollars apiece delivered on the cruiser's deck. 
Somehow the French cruisers are different. Apia gives 
them scant consideration; they are really regarded al- 
most as naval tramps. For one thing. France had nothing 
to do with the running of Samoan affairs, and its cruisers 
were, therefore, rank outsiders, not authorized to fire a 
single gun and call it war. Once a year a French war- 
ship comes into port on its way between the two French 
colonies of Tahiti and New Caledonia ; it comes unan- 
nounced and unexpected, its stay is but brief and with- 
out bearing on governmental affairs, and. the trades- 
men say, it contributes all too little to local coffers. 
The French at home legislate sharply against religious 
orders, and have even gone so far as to order their ex- 
pulsion, but in the Pacific they foster the work of the 
mission of the Marist priests, whose labors have in 
Oceanica always preceded the establishment of French 
protectorates. The annual visit of the French cruiser 
is solely to pay honor to the French bishop of the mis- 
sionary see of Samoa, and to look to it with the foster- 
ing care of a great and forever republican nation that no 
quarrel should exist between the two lay French citizens 
m Samoa. 
If the one French moiety had begun to squabble with 
the other French moiety, it would have been a sad plight, 
something, perhaps, like the interdict of the Middle Ages. 
For Citizen Jacques was a carpenter of coffins, and Citi- 
zen Georges was also a carpenter of coffins. If the 
normal business rivalry had ever reached an acrimonious 
stage, it can only be imagined what a sad state of affairs 
would have ensued. In the interests of the blessed dead 
it was just as well that the officers of the Republican 
navy should call and compose the differences which in 
the year had begun to arise between Citizen Jacques and 
Citizen Georges. 
Early one afternoon in the fair season, when the very 
clouds are not only no screen to the blaze of the sun, 
but rather serve as mirrors to reflect the glare, the signal 
flags unexpectedly began to flutter at the pilot station on 
Matautu Point, and the tale they told in fluttering 
signals was that a man-of-Avar was in sight. Between 
the early morning hours and the late afternoon hours all 
who can choose comfort spend the day beneath broad 
verandahs. Island habit keeps one interested in the sea, 
therefore you pick a shady reach of verandah where it is 
still possible to know what is going on out upon the 
ocean, and planting there the work and the sewing woman 
with her dwarf machine, you study that empty stretch of 
water until the weariness of seeing nothing for day after 
day becomes an ailment, a habit of thought. But the 
whole expanse of ocean is too great a contract to watch, 
man or woman, every white person in the exile of Apia 
does the work by deputy, never for long does one move 
out of sight of the pilot's flagstaff, for Captain O'Ryan 
keeps one of the savage islanders of his boat crew sit- 
ting all day long and every day on a stump at the end 
of the point sweeping the horizon with a spy glass that no 
coming vessel may escape him. Seldom Avas a vessel 
sighted except the mail steamers at four weeks intervals, 
but the occupation does not pall upon the native watch- 
man, every Polynesian in the broad Pacific would be only 
too happy to draw salary for sitting day by day on a 
stump. , . 1 , , 1 u 
On this particular afternoon the signals had scarcely be- 
gun to climb the pilot's flagstaff when the sewing woman 
caught them and announced their meaning. Sure enough 
a cruiser was in sight, and through the glass it was easy 
to make out the broad bands of the tricolor. The news 
was soon confirmed, not that there was any room to 
doubt. The houseboy was away in the pursuit of one 
of the duties for which he drew pay, his afternoon 
swim. In the dull despair of housekeeping in Samoa 
this necessity of taking a bunch of hours right out of the 
day, which the houseboy claimed as his right, grew on 
the housekeeping mind as a part of his duty. When one 
is served by attendants who look upon the assumption 
of even a shirt supplementary to their waistcloth as the 
equivalent of weai ing livery, it is after all commendable 
as a duty well performed when the houseboy takes a 
few hours off for bathing purposes. The houseboy was 
far more insistent upon the niceties of official etiquette 
than were those upon whom he conferred the high honor 
of accepting their wages. Of course the flag at the Con- 
sulate was flying from the lofty flagpole on the beach, 
M'hich in itself is a memorial of the wrecked Trenton and 
Vandalia, being made of a spar from each. But that did 
not satisfy the ideas of his mightiness, the houseboy. 
There were degrees of Stars and Stripes, and in his 
judgment the dignity of a great nation was lessened 
by the flying of the eight-foot flag, which was standing 
cut as stiff as a board in the full blast of the trade wind. 
He was for displaying the full-size sixteen-foot ensign 
which the regulations allowed every day and in all 
v/eathers. It broke his heart when the rule was laid 
down for his guidance that the small flag must be used on 
all days in between steamers, and always in rainy weather. 
If it had not been for that, the Government's bill for 
bunting would be enormously increased. A large flag 
would scarcely last a week in that high wind. He was 
only a houseboy, but he strutted under the idea that he 
v^as an official of the United States. He had no hesi- 
tation about encouraging such an idea, no inconsiderable 
portion of Samoan politics was settled in his cook house, 
where island statesmen called upon him to find out how 
America would regard their conduct. Really those mat- 
ters of statecraft could be settled just as well in the 
cook house as in the Consular office, and a reasonable view 
of Samoan affairs Avill see in the lesser building the more 
appropriate place for such settlement. 
When he saw the man-of-war signal on the pilot's flag- 
staff, the houseboy recalled the fact that a small flag was 
flying. The white people around at the Consulate in 
Vaiala might be stupidly content with such a small dis- 
play, they were so careless about so many of these essen- 
.tial matters. But as an official of the American Union 
(he never failed to call it laboriously in full the "Unaike 
Sekeke Meleke"), he knew what was due to official dig- 
nity, and he knew that it was measured by sixteen feet, 
and hang the price of bunting. Back from the swim- 
ming place under the Vaisingano bridge he came running 
at top speed, almost the only Icnown instance of haste on 
his part in the direction of his place of employment, 
though reasonably prompt the other way. Not halting to 
close the gate of the compound — a solemn necessity so 
long as the pigs of the native village roam at large — he 
dashed up the steps with a shout in passing of "French 
man-of-war," and went at once to the closet in which the 
flags were kept. With equal promptitude he selected the 
largest in stock and dashed down to the flagpole. To 
strike the offending banner was easy ; all he had to do was 
to loosen the halliards and the wind carried the flag down 
with a rush. But the difficulty came in hoisting its larger 
successor, for he had not learned the sailor fashion of 
hoisting the flag in a bundle, which comes loose at the 
top of the mast. Now, it is no easy task to hoist some 
eight square yards of bunting to the top of a staff more 
than a hundred feet high, when the wind is blowing as it 
does blow in the afternoons in Samoa. On his first at- 
tempt he failed. Within a foot of the top the flag stuck 
fast and would go no higher. He hauled it part way 
down and made a fresh trial. Again it stuck obstinately 
at the same place; again he hauled it down for a new 
start. This succeeded, and the dignity of a great nation 
was represented by its full sixteen feet of stripes, and the 
houseboy felt that as an official of the United States he 
had not proved remiss in the discharge of his duties. 
Far more than any man can do, a woman projects her- 
self to the other side of any event, and sees unerringly 
what effect it is producing upon others, and, of course, this 
was still more the case with the imperfectly tamed 
Samoan who felt that he had done his whole duty. In 
this case it was easy to understand that the officers of the 
French cruiser which then was just in front of the 
official residence and not more than a mile off shore would 
be in a state of puzzled wonder as to the meaning of 
two dips of the flag from the American Consulate. Two 
dips of an ensign have no meaning. There is no naval 
code or other system of the etiquette of the men of the 
sea in which two dips can carry any meaning. Yet on the 
other hand to touch the flag at all must mean something. 
Any motion of the flag not otherwise comprehensible 
would undoubtedly be taken as a signal of distress and 
-action taken accordingly. There was no particular dis- 
tress in Vaiala at that time; nothing, at least, beyond the 
lack of ice and the general loneliness of life in mid-Pacific. 
The landing of a boat load of French sailors and marines 
coming to the rescue of American interests would have 
been a relief to the general monotony, but it would have 
entailed all sorts of official explanations that it was just 
as well to avoid. It was a clumsy situation at best. The 
only way out of it was to complete the ill-timed salute 
and put in the explanations afterward. The houseboy, ac- 
cordingly, was ordered to lower the flag once more and 
finish out the salute. No sooner had this been done than 
the cruiser dipped her ensign. 
According to the local custom of the port of Apia, a 
relic of the warring times, when it took any amount of 
diplomacy to arrange an official call of the consuls on the 
ships, the consuls had twenty-four hours in which to make 
the first call upon a visiting warship without regard to 
any questions of relative rank. But in this instance the 
American representative thought that it would be just 
as well to go off at once and make the explanations as to 
the houseboy's efforts to be correct. After a hasty at- 
tempt to reniember the convolutions of the more common 
irregular verbs in the French grammar, he started out in 
his boat to pay the official call. 
After the first few words of reception, and before it 
was possible to lead up in an unobtrusive fashion to the 
subject, the French captain broached it himself. As soon 
as he began enthusiastically about the eternal amity be- 
tween the two great republics of the world, it was clear 
that anv attempt at explanation and casting of blame on 
the houseboy would only spoil a charming situation. 
France was tickled clean through with the spontaneous 
expression of the warm regard of America which every 
Frenchman in his infancy learned to believe in, which none 
the less it "deliriated" this particular French officer to 
find manifested in the heart of Oceanica. Was anybody 
going to apologize after that? Well, no. Not a word 
said to suggest that this sort of salute was not specially 
ordered in Washington for French gunboats. 
When it came time for the call to end, there was en- 
countered a hitch, a thing not common in warship ex- 
periences, where things generally move with beautiful 
precision. Samoa was very wise in the matter of guns 
and salutes. Even the Samoans knew all about it. They 
knew that a consul was entitled to receive his seven guns 
and that a consul-general got two more in token of the 
superiority of his rank. Unfortunately, their own king 
was sometimes saluted (a great personal distress to him, 
for he was gun vshy), and his twenty-one guns rather 
tended to produce the impression that he was three times 
as important as a consul. That complicated affairs, for 
it was the three consuls who did all the ruling, while the 
king did nothing but reign at $48.60 per month, royal 
magnificence at $12.15 a week. What thp hitch was 
failed to make itself clearly apprehended, as a junior 
officer came up on the run. It seemed to be that the sec- 
ond captain had mislaid the powder, or some such annoy- 
ing event, which might happen on any man-of-war, if it 
bad two captains. Meanwhile it was graciously offered 
to look over the ship. There was a preponderance of 
live stock, pigs beyond counting, coops of hens in every 
place in which it was possible to stow the great producers 
of omelets, no less than four cows were peacefully tied in 
stalls on the deck. At last the powder ceased to be mis- 
laid ; the steward had probably locked it up in his pantry ; 
the salute could be fired and the caller could go away with 
all the honors. 
Next morning when the call was returned — they are 
very punctilious in the South Sea, where there is nothing 
larger to occupy the mind — the French captain still carried 
his enthusiasm with him, as though a great international 
union had just been cemented. He was charmed to find 
that madame was in residence ; he should crave permis- 
sion to call upon her with some of the passengers of his 
cabin, ladies of the superior colonial government in 
Tahiti. As to passengers, oh ! yes, when there were . 
ladies of the number it did much to add to the pleasure 
of the voyage; the cruisers in the South Sea were ex- 
pected to carry many. Tahiti was the whole width of an 
ocean from Noumea, and it was only in New Caledonia 
that it was possible to embark upon the steamers of the 
return to France. It was therefore a part of the French 
colonial policy that the naval vessels should carry pas- 
sengers between the widely .separated French colonies of 
Oceanica, for this trip he was carrying fifty-four, and it 
was for their feeding that the animals were carried alive 
upon the deck. His experience was that the presence of 
the animals did not at all interfere with the naval duties 
of the sailors. Of course, in time of war the animals 
would be thrown overboard; as to the passengers in such 
a case, there would be some other provision for them. 
The French vessels of war in South Pacific waters are 
probably well fitted to their uses, but they are inferior to 
the fleets of the other European nations wliich cruise 
south of the line. They are entirely imarmored cruisers 
of an old type, in all likelihood vessels which have out- 
lasted their usefulness elsewhere, and which have been 
sent to Oceanica principally because they have the room 
for passengers and their necessary live stock on deck. 
That seems to be very nearly the sum of their employ- 
ment, to lie for months at a time either in Noumea or 
Papeete, once a year to make a slow voyage with pas- 
sengers either from New Caledonia to Tahiti, or the same 
voyage in the reverse order. They seldom employ their 
spare time in marine surveying, such as occupies British 
and German commanders. Once in a while they may be 
called on to exact some punishment for a massacre on 
the French islands in the west, the Loyalties and part of 
the New Hebrides. If they were more earnest in their 
patrol of these wild lands, it might be that the Freiich 
islands would in time lose their reputation for being 
populated with the mo,st intractable cannibals of the whole 
Pacific sphere of barbarism, a reputation which up to the 
present the native inhabitants have done their best to de- 
serve at every opportunity. Instead of performing the 
rigid police which the civilized powers regard a duty 
when brought into close touch with the wild races of the 
worid, the French fleet has no higher function than as 
acting as a connecting line at rare intervals for the subsi- 
dized French steamship line from Marseilles to Noumea 
by way of Australian ports. Slowly carrying passengers 
and live stock, they strive to make one call a year at 
Samoa and Tonga and Wallis Island, and wherever else 
one of the superior order of the French clergy is in charge 
of a mission. Llewella Pierce Churchill. 
Down the Magnetawan. 
In Two Parts— Patt One. 
For some time we had been studying guide books and 
charts, getting all the information we could about the 
Magnetawan River. Two things on which every source 
of information agreed, and which we found to be true, 
were, that the river was very rough and there was from 
eight to ten miles of carrying to be done. We wjere fortu- 
nate enough to procure a chart of the river with all the 
portages marked, and felt that with two competent guides 
we could now make the trip with safety. Having heard 
that neither guides nor canoes could be hired at Burk s 
Falls, we wrote to Captain Swartman, of Waubaushene, 
to engage two guides and canoes for us there. He pro- 
cured Wilson Mowers and Clayton Gillete, two thor- 
oughly competent and reliable men, and two good canoes. 
We niet the guides at Orillia Monday afternoon, Aug. 12, 
1901. Neither of them had ever been on the Magnetawan, 
but they had heard of its terrors, and one of them was 
ready to go home, as there was a woman in the party. 
The Pacific Express on the Grand Trunk was crowded, 
until there was no longer standing room, with men going 
to harvest the great wheat crop in the Northwest Terri- 
tory. The proverbial "room for one more" was actually 
occupied, and the crowds of men at the stations beyond 
Gravenhurst were obliged to wait for the night express. 
The railroad company was selling tickets to Winnipeg 
for $10. The men, who had taken advantage of these, 
low rates, were quiet and respectful. There was little or' 
no drinking and no disorderly conduct. They were evi- 
dently small farmers lured by the low rates and good 
wages, many of them no doubt hoping to get land of their 
own in this great wheat country. 
The train was thirty minutes behind time, and the stores 
were all closed when we reached Burk's Falls. Being 1 
anxious to start down the river the next morning on the 
little steamer that runs to Ahmic Harbor, Mr. Sharp 
kindly took us into his store that night, put up our provi- 
sions and sent them to the dock the next morning. We 
expected to spend ten days on the river, but considered it 
advisable to carry provisions enough to last four people 
fourteen days, of which the following is a complete list; 
