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The fear of ghosts and of the dark is very deeply written in the mind of the Polynesian; not least of the Marquesan. Poor Taipi, the chief of Anaho, was condemned to ride to Hatiheu on a moonless night. He borrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for the adventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the Cascos by the hand as for a final separation.
Taipi has now been some time in office; from all I saw he seemed a person very fit. He is not the least unpopular, and yet his power is nothing. He is a chief to the French, and goes to breakfast with the Resident; but for any practical end of chieftaincy a rag doll were equally efficient.
The last visit was not long protracted. One after another they shook hands and got down into their canoe; when Hoka turned his back immediately upon the ship, so that we saw his face no more. Taipi, on the other hand, remained standing and facing us with gracious valedictory gestures; and when Captain Otis dipped the ensign, the whole party saluted with their hats.
"Taipi" the chart spelled it, and spelled it correctly, but I prefer "Typee," and I shall always spell it "Typee." When I was a little boy, I read a book spelled in that manner Herman Melville's "Typee"; and many long hours I dreamed over its pages. Nor was it all dreaming.
Death of Aumia; funeral chant and burial customs; causes for the death of a race. On the paepae of a poor cabin near my own lived two women, Aumia and Taipi, in the last stages of consumption. Aumia had been, only a few months earlier, the beauty of the island. "She was one of the gayest," said Haabunai, "but the pokoko has taken her."
The reason any human beings endure such tortures to remain in this gloomy, deserted spot can only be the affection the Marquesan has for his home. Not until epidemics have carried off all but one or two inhabitants in a valley can those remaining be persuaded to leave it. This dozen of the Taipi clan are the remainder of the twenty Ramqe saw with the heartbroken American.
And not many days after he was to be observed in a state of smiling and lop-sided imbecility, the Casco ribbon upside down on his dishonoured hat. But his business that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here. Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horse-back?
Only the stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin, cairn, or standing stone, or vitrified fort present a more stern appearance of antiquity. We must have passed from six to eight of these now houseless platforms. On the main road of the island, where it crosses the valley of Taipi, Mr.
She was pitifully thin when I first saw her, lying all day on a heap of mats, with Taipi beside her, both coughing, coughing. An epidemic of colds had seized Atuona, brought, most probably, by the schooner Papeite, for no other had arrived since the Morning Star.
He tapu'd his own trees, and his example was imitated over all Hatiheu and Anaho. I fear Taipi might have tapu'd all that he possessed and found none to follow him. So much for the esteem in which the dignity of an appointed chief is held by others; a single circumstance will show what he thinks of it himself. I never met one, but he took an early opportunity to explain his situation.
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