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Updated: June 17, 2025
I know not what they thought of Father Dordillon: they are the only class I did not question; but I suspect the prelate to have regarded them askance, for he was eminently human. During my stay at Tai-o-hae, the time of the yearly holiday came round at the girls' school; and a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu to take the daughters of that island home.
These ideas most Polynesians have accepted in appearance, as they accept other ideas of the whites; in practice, they reduce it to a farce. I have heard the French resident in the Marquesas in talk with the French gaoler of Tai-o-hae: "Eh bien, ou sont vos prisonnieres? Je crois, mon commandant, qu'elles sont allees quelque part faire une visite." And the ladies would be welcome.
In Tai-o-hae Bay he moored his fleet, and was met by flocks of friendly canoes and great numbers of the beautiful island women, who swam out to meet the strangers. Among them he found Wilson, an Englishman who had long been here and who was tattooed from head to foot.
To Porter's amazement, the Tai-o-hae men, surmounting incredible difficulties, laid the gun in position, and as the Hapaas scorned the futile-looking contrivance and declared that they would not make peace with the whites, Porter sent his first assistant with forty men, armed with muskets and accompanied by natives carrying these weapons and ammunition for the cannon.
"I was working in the store of the Socéité Comerciale de l'Ocean in Tai-o-hae when the Tropic Bird, a San Francisco mail-schooner, arrived. That was ten years ago. An old man, an American, came into our place and asked the way to Typee. "'Ah, I said, 'you have been reading that book by Melville. He made no reply, but asked me to escort him to the valley.
It was a three-days' feast of innocence." "But there are not many whites here?" I asked. "No," he replied. "There are one hundred and twenty people in Tai-o-hae now, and but a few are whites. Alas, mon ami, they do not set a good example. They mean well; they are brave men, but they do not keep the commandments. Here is a chart I drew showing the rise of the church since Peter.
To complete the picture of convict life in Tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that these criminals draw a salary as regularly as the President of the Republic. Ten sous a day is their hire. Thus they have money, food, shelter, clothing, and, I was about to write, their liberty. The French are certainly a good-natured people, and make easy masters.
I will not say that it was a miracle, but it was a very striking triumph for Joan. "That for the human; now for the beast. A month before the fête I commissioned Captain Capriata to bring the mare to Tai-o-hae in his schooner. The animal came safely to the harbor. She was still on deck when a storm arose, and Capriata thought it best for him to lift his anchor and go to the open sea.
I sailed from Tai-o-hae for an unknown port, carried by the schooner Roberta, which had brought the white mare from Atuona and whose skipper had bore so well the white banner of Joan in the procession that did her honor.
Tai-o-hae became the seat of power of the whites in the islands; it waxed in importance, saw admirals, governors, and bishops sitting in state on the broad verandas of government buildings, witnessed that new thing, the making of a king and queen, knew the stolid march of convicts, white and brown, images of saints carried in processions, and schools opened to regenerate the race of idol-worshippers.
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