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Updated: May 19, 2025
As I have reason to believe, however, that the observances of the Typees in these matters are the same with those of all other tribes on the island, I will here relate a scene I chanced to witness at Nukuheva. A young man had died, about daybreak, in a house near the beach. I had been sent ashore that morning, and saw a good deal of the preparations they were making for his obsequies.
But the continual happiness, which so far as I was able to judge appeared to prevail in the valley, sprang principally from that all-pervading sensation which Rousseau has told us be at one time experienced, the mere buoyant sense of a healthful physical existence. And indeed in this particular the Typees had ample reason to felicitate themselves, for sickness was almost unknown.
Sometimes after having been roasted in the fire, the natives snatch it briskly from the embers, and permitting it to slip out of the yielding rind into a vessel of cold water, stir up the mixture, which they call 'bo-a-sho'. I never could endure this compound, and indeed the preparation is not greatly in vogue among the more polite Typees.
How strongly rooted, then, must be the determination of the Typees with regard to me, and how suddenly could they display the strangest passions! The mere suggestion of my departure had estranged from me, for the time at least, Mehevi, who was the most influential of all the chiefs, and who had previously exhibited so many instances of his friendly sentiments.
But how he had gained the knowledge of these matters I could not understand, unless it were that he had just come from Nukuheva a supposition which his travel-stained appearance not a little supported. But, if a native of that region, I could not account for his friendly reception at the hands of the Typees.
At Nukuheva, and, I believe, in all the other valleys, the weed is very scarce, being only obtained in small quantities from foreigners, and smoking is consequently with the inhabitants of these places a very great luxury. How it was that the Typees were so well furnished with it I cannot divine.
It was quite amusing, too, to see with what earnestness they disclaimed all cannibal propensities on their own part, while they denounced their enemies the Typees as inveterate gourmandizers of human flesh; but this is a peculiarity to which I shall hereafter have occasion to allude.
The savages assured me that there had not but I was inclined to believe that by deceiving me in this particular they sought to allay the violence of my grief. However that might be, this incident showed plainly that the Typees intended to hold me a prisoner. As they still treated me with the same sedulous attention as before, I was utterly at a loss how to account for their singular conduct.
But why this excess of deferential kindness, or what equivalent can they imagine us capable of rendering them for it? We were fairly puzzled. But, despite the apprehensions I could not dispel, the horrible character imputed to these Typees appeared to be wholly undeserved. “Why, they are cannibals!” said Toby, on one occasion when I eulogized the tribe.
The white cascades marking the green head of the Typee valley first caught Toby’s eye; Marheyo’s house could easily be traced by them. As Jimmy led the way along the ridge, Toby observed that the valley of the Happars did not extend near so far inland as that of the Typees. This accounted for our mistake in entering the latter valley as we had.
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