Typee: A Romance of the South Seas

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY--GOLDEN LIZARDS--TAMENESS OF THEBIRDS--MOSQUITOES--FLIES--DOGS--A SOLITARY CAT--THE CLIMATE--THECOCOANUT TREE--SINGULAR MODES OF CLIMBING IT--AN AGILE YOUNGCHIEF--FEARLESSNESS OF THE CHILDREN--TOO-TOO AND THE COCOANUT TREE--THEBIRDS OF THE VALLEY

  I THINK I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural historyof the valley.

  Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came those dogsthat I saw in Typee? Dogs!--Big hairless rats rather; all with smooth,shining speckled hides--fat sides, and very disagreeable faces. Whencecould they have come? That they were not the indigenous production ofthe region, I am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of theirbeing interlopers, looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hidethemselves in some dark corner. It was plain enough they did not feel athome in the vale--that they wished themselves well out of it, and backto the ugly country from which they must have come.

  Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked nothingbetter than to have been the death of every one of them. In fact, on oneoccasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine crusade to Mehevi; butthe benevolent king would not consent to it. He heard me very patiently;but when I had finished, shook his head, and told me in confidence thatthey were 'taboo'.

  As for the animal that made the fortune of the ex-lord-mayorWhittington, I shall never forget the day that I was lying in the houseabout noon, everybody else being fast asleep; and happening to raisemy eyes, met those of a big black spectral cat, which sat erect in thedoorway, looking at me with its frightful goggling green orbs, like oneof those monstrous imps that torment some of Teniers' saints! I am oneof those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, atany time an insufferable annoyance.

  Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpectedapparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When I hada little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started up; thecat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house in pursuit;but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever saw one in thevalley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It is just possible thatit might have escaped from one of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in vainto seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of themhad seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me tothis day.

  Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was nonewhich I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-huedspecies of lizard. It measured perhaps five inches from head to tail,and was most gracefully proportioned. Numbers of those creatures wereto be seen basking in the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses, andmultitudes at all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as theyran frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up anddown the tall shafts of the cocoanut trees. But the remarkable beautyof these little animals and their lively ways were not their only claimsupon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible to fear.Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady placeduring the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with them.If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair: when Itried to frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would turn forprotection to the very hand that attacked it.

  The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see one perchedupon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced towards it, it didnot fly away immediately, but waited quietly looking at you, until youcould almost touch it, and then took wing slowly, less alarmed at yourpresence, it would seem, than desirous of removing itself from yourpath. Had salt been less scarce in the valley than it was, this was thevery place to have gone birding with it. I remember that once, on anuninhabited island of the Gallipagos, a bird alighted on my outstretchedarm, while its mate chirped from an adjoining tree. Its tameness, farfrom shocking me, as a similar occurrence did Selkirk, imparted tome the most exquisite thrill of delight I ever experienced, and withsomewhat of the same pleasure did I afterwards behold the birds andlizards of the valley show their confidence in the kindliness of man.

  Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have entailed uponsome of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introductionamong them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers--theMosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Societygroup, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise erelong to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz,and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantlyexasperating the natives materially obstruct the benevolent labours ofthe missionaries.

  From this grievous visitation, however the Typees are as yet whollyexempt; but its place is unfortunately in some degree supplied by theoccasional presence of a minute species of fly, which, without stinging,is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of thebirds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidenceof this insect. He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go toroost there if you do not disturb him, or force his way through yourhair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he isresolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was soinconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering aroundme. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the openapartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the sensation wasdreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor creatures beingenveloped in inner darkness, must in their consternation have stumbledover my palate, and been precipitated into the gulf beneath. At anyrate, though I afterwards charitably held my mouth open for at leastfive minutes, with a view of affording egress to the stragglers, none ofthem ever availed themselves of the opportunity.

  There are no wild animals of any kind on the island unless it be decidedthat the natives themselves are such. The mountains and the interiorpresent to the eye nothing but silent solitudes, unbroken by the roarof beasts of prey, and enlivened by few tokens even of minute animatedexistence. There are no venomous reptiles, and no snakes of anydescription to be found in any of the valleys.

  In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no topic ofconversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes. The rainyseason, it is true, brings frequent showers, but they are intermittingand refreshing. When an islander bound on some expedition rises from hiscouch in the morning, he is never solicitous to peep out and see how thesky looks, or ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is alwayssure of a 'fine day', and the promise of a few genial showers he hailswith pleasure. There is never any of that 'remarkable weather' on theislands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America, andstill continues to call forth the wondering conversational exclamationsof its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of those eccentricmeteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In the valley ofTypee ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable by suddenfrosts, nor would picnic parties be deferred on account of inauspicioussnowstorms: for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summerand sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical month of June justmelting into July.

  It is this genial climate which causes the cocoanuts to flourish as theydo. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil of theMarquesas, and home aloft on a stately column more than a hundred feetfrom the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible to the simplenatives. Indeed the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft, without a singlelimb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presentsan obstacle only to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuityof the islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would leadthem patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly partingfrom their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This certainly wouldbe the case, were it not that the young fruit, encased in a soft greenhusk, with the incipient meat adhering in a jelly-like pellicle to itssides, and containing a bumper of the most delicious nectar, is whatthey chiefly prize. They have at least twenty different term
s to expressas many progressive stages in the growth of the nut. Many of them rejectthe fruit altogether except at a particular period of its growth, which,incredible as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertainwithin an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in theirtastes; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages, andingeniously tapping them, will first sip from one and then from another,as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber experimenting glass in handamong his dusty demi-johns of different vintages.

  Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their comrades,and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of walking upthe trunk of the cocoanut trees which to me seemed little less thanmiraculous; and when looking at them in the act, I experienced thatcurious perplexity a child feels when he beholds a fly moving feetuppermost along a ceiling.

  I will endeavour to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble youngchief, sometimes performed this feat for my peculiar gratification; buthis preliminary performances must also be recorded. Upon my signifyingmy desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some particulartree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden attitude ofsurprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request.Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted onhis countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will,and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, hestands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as thoughendeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. Asif defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to the earthdespondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair; and then,starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his head, raisesboth hands, like a school-boy about to catch a falling ball. Aftercontinuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation that the fruitwas going to be tossed down to him by some good spirit in the tree-top,he turns wildly round in another fit of despair, and scampers off to thedistance of thirty or forty yards. Here he remains awhile, eyeing thetree, the very picture of misery; but the next moment, receiving, as itwere, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and claspingboth arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little above the other,he presses the soles of his feet close together against the tree,extending his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal, and hisbody becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over hand and foot overfoot, he rises from the earth with steady rapidity, and almost beforeyou are aware of it, has gained the cradled and embowered nest of nuts,and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to the ground.

  This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the trunkdeclines considerably from the perpendicular. This, however, is almostalways the case; some of the perfectly straight shafts of the treesleaning at an angle of thirty degrees.

  The less active among the men, and many of the children of the valleyhave another method of climbing. They take a broad and stout piece ofbark, and secure each end of it to their ankles, so that when the feetthus confined are extended apart, a space of little more than twelveinches is left between them. This contrivance greatly facilitatesthe act of climbing. The band pressed against the tree, and closelyembracing it, yields a pretty firm support; while with the arms claspedabout the trunk, and at regular intervals sustaining the body, the feetare drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and a corresponding elevation ofthe hands immediately succeeds. In this way I have seen little children,scarcely five years of age, fearlessly climbing the slender pole ofa young cocoanut tree, and while hanging perhaps fifty feet from theground, receiving the plaudits of their parents beneath, who clappedtheir hands, and encouraged them to mount still higher.

  What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions, wouldthe nervous mothers of America and England say to a similar display ofhardihood in any of their children? The Lacedemonian nation might haveapproved of it, but most modern dames would have gone into hysterics atthe sight.

  At the top of the cocoanut tree the numerous branches, radiating onall sides from a common centre, form a sort of green and wavingbasket, between the leaflets of which you just discern the nuts thicklyclustering together, and on the loftier trees looking no bigger fromthe ground than bunches of grapes. I remember one adventurous littlefellow--Too-Too was the rascal's name--who had built himself a sort ofaerial baby-house in the picturesque tuft of a tree adjoining Marheyo'shabitation. He used to spend hours there,--rustling among the branches,and shouting with delight every time the strong gusts of wind rushingdown from the mountain side, swayed to and fro the tall and flexiblecolumn on which he was perched. Whenever I heard Too-Too's musical voicesounding strangely to the ear from so great a height, and beheld himpeeping down upon me from out his leafy covert, he always recalled to mymind Dibdin's lines--

  'There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To look out for the life of poor Jack.'

  Birds--bright and beautiful birds--fly over the valley of Typee. Yousee them perched aloft among the immovable boughs of the majesticbread-fruit trees, or gently swaying on the elastic branches of theOmoo; skimming over the palmetto thatching of the bamboo huts; passinglike spirits on the wing through the shadows of the grove, and sometimesdescending into the bosom of the valley in gleaming flights from themountains. Their plumage is purple and azure, crimson and white, blackand gold; with bills of every tint: bright bloody red, jet black, andivory white, and their eyes are bright and sparkling; they go sailingthrough the air in starry throngs; but, alas! the spell of dumbness isupon them all--there is not a single warbler in the valley!

  I know not why it was, but the sight of these birds, generally theministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy. As in theirdumb beauty they hovered by me whilst I was walking, or looked down uponme with steady curious eyes from out the foliage, I was almost inclinedto fancy that they knew they were gazing upon a stranger, and that theycommiserated his fate.