Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
Murray brought it out early in 1846, in his Colonial and Home Library, as 'A Narrative of a Four Months' Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands; or, a Peep at Polynesian Life, or, more briefly, 'Melville's Marquesas Islands. It was issued in America with the author's own title, 'Typee, and in the outward shape of a work of fiction. Mr.
“Without the least hesitation I advanced towards them, and had approached within about a yard of the foremost, when, pointing angrily into the Typee valley, and uttering some savage exclamation, he wheeled round his weapon like lightning, and struck me in a moment to the ground. The blow inflicted this wound, and took away my senses.
This old woman, the sailor afterwards said, was the wife of an aged king of a small inland valley, communicating by a deep pass with the country of the Typees. The inmates of the two valleys were related to each other by blood, and were known by the same name. The old woman had gone down into the Typee valley the day before, and was now, with three chiefs, her sons, on a visit to her kinsmen.
Accordingly he not only gave him the money, but took care to assure him, over and over again, that as soon as he brought me aboard he would receive a still larger sum. Before sunrise the next day, Jimmy and the Typee started in two of the ship’s boats, which were manned by tabooed natives.
I was eager for the adventure, to voyage to the valley of Typee, where Herman Melville had lived with Fayaway and Kori-Kori, where Captain Porter had erected the American flag a century before, and where cannibalism and tattooing had reached their most artistic development. But to sever the tie with Tautira was saddening.
The man who warned us was afflicted horribly with elephantiasis. All were suffering from lung trouble. The valley of Typee was the abode of death, and the dozen survivors of the tribe were gasping feebly the last painful breaths of the race.
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.
While at Lahainaluna the residence of this monstrous Jezebel a humpbacked wretch was pointed out to me, who, some twenty-five years previously, had had the vertebrae of his backbone very seriously discomposed by his gentle mistress. The particular grades of rank existing among the chiefs of Typee, I could not in all cases determine.
Out to sea runs the growing breakwater from Toro Point, the great wireless tower, yet just across the bay on a little jutting, dense-grown tongue of land is the jungle hut of a jungle family as utterly untouched by civilization as was the verdant valley of Typee on the day Melville and Toby came stumbling down into it from the hills above.
It was in vain to seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of them had seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me to this day. Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was none which I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-hued species of lizard.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking