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Updated: June 17, 2025
On Sunday these are gone, and nothing to be seen but dogs of all ranks and sizes peacefully slumbering in the shady grounds; for the dogs of Tai-o-hae are very courtly-minded, and make the seat of Government their promenade and place of siesta.
"'Oward leaped over the side and swum ashore." An avenue ran the length of the beach, shaded by trees, and crossing a gentle stream. Along this avenue was all the life and commerce of Tai-o-hae. Two traders' shops, empty offices, a gendarme, a handful of motley half-castes lounging under the trees this was all that was left of former greatness. Only nature had not changed.
So quickly did these dozen whites collect, so short are the distances in Tai-o-hae, that they were already exchanging guesses as to the nationality and business of the strange vessel, before she had gone about upon her second board towards the anchorage. A moment after, English colours were broken out at the main truck.
Since Kahuiti, my man-eating friend of Taaoa, was born, the cycle had been completed. I was on my way now to see, in Tai-o-hae, a man who was giving his life to bring the white man's religion to the few dying natives who remained. At dusk the wind died, and we put out the oars.
It was about three o'clock of a winter's afternoon in Tai-o-hae, the French capital and port of entry of the Marquesas Islands. The Trades blew strong and squally; the surf roared loud on the shingle beach; and the fifty-ton schooner of war, that carries the flag and influence of France about the islands of the cannibal group, rolled at her moorings under Prison Hill.
You must see Typee to realize what people mean to a place. "The nonos were simply hell, but as I had lived a good many years in Tai-o-hae I was hardened to them. The old man slapped at them occasionally, but made no complaint. He hardly seemed to feel them, or to realize what their numbers meant.
"There are many proofs of this, but most convincing is a happening that every one in Tai-o-hae and Nuka-hiva knows, because it happened only a few years ago. I saw that happening." I looked at him with attention, and after a few puffs of smoke he continued. "You may think, you who use the Iron Fingers That Make Words, that the shark does not know the difference between men and women.
The port the mart, the civil and religious capital of these rude islands is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a precipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva. It was midwinter when we came thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant.
'Here nobody ever works, and all eat opium, said a gendarme; and Ah Fu knew a woman who ate a dollar's worth in a day. The successful thief will give a handful of money to each of his friends, a dress to a woman, pass an evening in one of the taverns of Tai-o-hae, during which he treats all comers, produce a big lump of opium, and retire to the bush to eat and sleep it off.
In the lifetime of a man, Tai-o-hae swelled from a simple native village with thousands of healthy, happy people, to the capital of an archipelago, with warships, troops, prisons, churches, schools, and plantations, and reverted to a deserted, melancholy beach, with decaying, uninhabited buildings testifying to catastrophe.
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