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Updated: May 19, 2025
Added to this, he could not bear the idea of again returning to this dangerous place; and as for the expectation of persuading the Frenchmen to detach a boat's crew for the purpose of rescuing me from the Typees, he looked upon it as idle; and with arguments that I could not answer, urged the improbability of their provoking the hostilities of the clan by any such measure; especially, as for the purpose of quieting its apprehensions, they had as yet refrained from making any visit to the bay.
Influenced by these feelings, I now felt a strong desire to avail myself of the stranger’s protection, and under his safeguard to return to Nukuheva. But as soon as I hinted at this, he unhesitatingly pronounced it to be entirely impracticable; assuring me that the Typees would never consent to my leaving the valley.
During the time I lived among the Typees, no one was ever put upon his trial for any offence against the public. To all appearance there were no courts of law or equity. There was no municipal police for the purpose of apprehending vagrants and disorderly characters.
In truth, the Typees, so far as their actions evince, submitted to no laws, human or divine—always excepting the thrice mysterious Taboo. The “independent electors” of the valley were not to be browbeaten by chiefs, priests, idols, or devils. As for the luckless idols, they received more hard knocks than supplications.
Marnoo told me, with evident alarm in his countenance, that although admitted into the bay on a friendly footing with its inhabitants, he could not presume to meddle with their concerns, as such a procedure, if persisted in, would at once absolve the Typees from the restraints of the “taboo,” although so long as he refrained from any such conduct, it screened him effectually from the consequences of the enmity they bore his tribe.
Not an enemy was to be seen, and what was still more surprising, not a single man dropped, though the pebbles fell among the leaves like hail. There was a moment’s pause, when the Typees, with wild shrieks, flung themselves into the covert, spear in hand; nor was Toby behind-hand.
But, alas! it was after all a raw fish; and all I can say is, that Fayaway ate it in a more ladylike manner than any other girl of the valley. When at Rome do as the Romans do, I held to be so good a proverb, that being in Typee, I made a point of doing as the Typees did.
As nothing stands in the way of a separation, the matrimonial yoke sits easily and lightly, and a Typee wife lives on very pleasant and sociable terms with her husbands. On the whole, wedlock, as known among these Typees, seems to be of a more distinct and enduring nature than is usually the case with barbarous people.
Nothing can be more uniform and undiversified than the life of the Typees; one tranquil day of ease and happiness follows another in quiet succession; and with these unsophisticated savages the history of a day is the history of a life. I will therefore, as briefly as I can, describe one of our days in the valley. To begin with the morning.
Who can wonder at the deadly hatred of the Typees to all foreigners after such unprovoked atrocities? Thus it is that they whom we denominate 'savages' are made to deserve the title.
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