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Updated: June 11, 2025
Her mast was still stepped, but a hundred centipedes crawled over the hull. When I returned to the fire, the boatmen were talking. Ugh! Dried-up Stream! his stomach full and smoke in his mouth, bethought himself of a tale, an incident of this very spot. In a sardonic manner he began: "The men of this island, Tahuata, in the old days descended on Fatu-hiva to hunt the man-meat.
No king could fare more royally than this Swiss, who during twenty years had never left the forgotten little island of Fatu-hiva. His house, set in this bower of greenery, of flowers and perfumes, was airy and neat, whitewashed both inside and out, with a broad veranda painted black. Two bedrooms, a storeroom in which he sold his merchandise, and a workroom, sufficed for all his needs.
When eight bells sounded the hour of four, I got upon my feet and in the mellow dawn saw a panorama of peak and precipice, dark and threatening, the coast of Fatu-hiva and the entrance to Oomoa Bay, the southernmost island of the Marquesas, and the harbor in which the first white men who saw the islands anchored over three hundred years ago.
The fantastic and majestic assemblage of rock shapes on the shores of Fatu-hiva appeared as if some Herculean sculptor with disordered brain and mighty hand had labored to reproduce the fearful chimeras of his dreams. The priest and I, with the supercargo, went ashore in a boat at six o'clock, and reached a beach as smooth and inviting as that of Atuona.
Oomoa and Hanavave, the adjacent bay and village, were resorts for whalers, who brought a plague of ills that reduced the population of Fatu-hiva from many thousands to less than three hundred.
I visited Hanamate, an hour from Atuona, where fifty years ago hundreds of natives lived. Not one survived to greet me. Consumption came first to Hanavave, on the island of Fatu-hiva.
What romances he had lived and seen were hidden in his grizzled bosom, for he said little, and nothing of himself. The supercargo, Henry Lee, a Norwegian of twenty-five years, six of which he had passed among the islands, set out the rum and wine and a clay bottle of water. He introduced me to Père Olivier, a priest of the mission, whose charge was in the island of Fatu-hiva.
In 1521 Magellan must have passed between the Marquesas and Paumotas, but he does not mention them. Seventy-three years later a Spanish flotilla sent from Callao by Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, viceroy of Peru, found this island of Fatu-hiva, and its commander, Mendaña, named the group for the viceroy's lady, Las Islas Marquesas de Mendoza.
Turning and gazing toward Fatu-hiva I saw the Southern Cross, low in the sky, brilliant, and splendid. "Mataike fetu!" Ghost Girl named the constellation. "The Small Eyes." "Miope has rivers like Taka-Uku and Atuona," I said, relying on the alleged canals of Mars to save my soul.
Grelet would eventually have transported me, but so great was his aversion to leaving Fatu-hiva that I felt it would be asking too much of him. He reminded me that Kant, the great metaphysician, had lived eighty years in his birthplace and never stirred more than seven miles from it. The canoe had come to Hanavave to bring back two young women.
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