Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
In Atuona, a village planted in a shore-side marsh, the houses standing everywhere intermingled with the pools of a taro-garden, we find every condition of tropical danger and discomfort; and yet there are not even mosquitoes not even the hateful day-fly of Nuka-hiva and fever, and its concomitant, the island fe'efe'e, are unknown.
"He-ee Nuka-hiva!" they sang in a soft monotone, while they pulled hard for the mouth of the bay. The priest and I were fairly comfortable in the stern, the steersman perched behind us on the very edge of the combing, balancing himself to the rise and fall of the boat as an acrobat on a rope. I laid my head on my bag and fell asleep before the sea had been reached.
That he had been one of the great of Nuka-hiva was certain; the fact was stamped indelibly upon his person, and though worn and faded to the ghastly green of old copper, it remained to proclaim his lineage and his rank. "Kaoha te iki!" said this ancient, as he stood in the path. "Kaoha e!" I saluted him. "Puaka piki enata" he said further, and pointed down the trail. What could he mean?
But there were rumors in the village of a strange dance held by the inhabitants of Nuka-hiva, on another island, in celebration of the harvest of the mei. Weird observances were hinted, rites participated in only by men who danced stark naked, praising the old gods. This was a custom of the old days, said Great Fern, with those too-innocent eyes opened artlessly upon me.
Thirty years he had been there, he said, and fingered his white locks as a bashful child pulls out his pinafore. 'Et point de resultats, monsieur, presque pas de resultats. He pointed to the scholars: 'You see, sir, all the youth of Nuka-hiva and Ua-pu. Between the ages of six and fifteen this is all that remains; and it is but a few years since we had a hundred and twenty from Nuka-hiva alone.
America might have been responsible for the death of the Marquesan race had not the young nation been engaged in a deadly struggle with Great Britain when an American naval captain, David Porter, seized Nuka-hiva. A hundred years ago the Stars and Stripes floated over the little hill above the bay, and American cannon upon it commanded the village of Tai-o-hae.
For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him to Nuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. The motive for this act was inconceivably small; poor Tari's wages, which were thus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the New Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair.
The vapor flies to the far rim of the Sea of Atolls. Strike there! Strike far north! The sea casts up distant Nuka-Hiva, Land of the War Fleet, where the waves are towering billows." This was the ancient chant of the Raiateans, sung in the old days before the whites came, when they thought of the deeds that were done by the more-than-human men who lived on these desolate islands.
The Jeanne d'Arc, a beautiful, long, curving craft manned by twelve oarsmen, came like a white bird over the blue waters of the Bay of Traitors one Saturday afternoon, bringing Père Victorien to Atuona. He was from Hatiheu, on the island of Nuka-hiva, seventy miles to the north.
And even then, our objective, l28 degrees west longitude, was five degrees north of the Line, while Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, lay nine degrees south of the Line and twelve degrees to the west! There remained only one thing to do to work south out of the trade and into the variables.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking