Myths Of Tropic
pp. 26-27 · Read in the full issue
Isles
Story of Disillusionment
By “Tauata.”
LONG ago, some writer or college of writers composed the Legend of the Tropics. Conceived to adorn a tale of some veracious traveller, per petuated to embellish torrid romance and travel agency brochures, it seems destined to live forever.
Between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Nature conducts herself in a most extraordinary way. The sun, in the morning, rushes up like a rocket, and at evening disappears be hind the western horizon with the speed of a falling meteor. Light and darkness explode over the world with out the gracious ceremonies of dawn and twilight.
Absolutely every writer of travelogue or romance who leads his reader to the Torrid Zone, wedges into his text some sentence to faithfully carry on
the myth: “Night fell suddenly like a sable curtain over the palpitating tropic world” or some phrase of similar import.
Islands— “emerald jewels set in the enamel of a sapphire sea”—invariably shimmer, and are full of mystery.
Nature is ever bountiful. The native of these fortunate latitudes toils not neither does he spin. He has but to shake a tree or extend his hand from his couch of flowery ease, and his table and wardrobe are supplied.
The sea is equally generous. A canoe floated from the beach is soon filled with flying fish seeking refuge from pursuing enemies. The larger fish leap in after their prey. The native stuns them with a few well directed blows of his paddle, and his marketing for the day is accomplished.
T IKE everyone born in the Tem- L* perate Zones, we believed these things until we came to the islands.
At the hour of sunset of our first day on Tahiti we repaired to a wooden bench, under the trees of the water front, to witness the thunderous descent of night—of which we had read so much. Instead, we saw the banners of the hosts of Saint Michael filling the western sky and reflecting their crimson and royal purple, and colours no man can name, on the cloud masses of the firmament. Gradu ally these faded to a gentle twilight.
In the faint afterglow we saw the planet mercury. That was all.
Our next disillusionment was the fortunate native.
At Feraoraoraa (the twilight before the dawn), our Tahitian neighbour is off to the mountains for Fe’i (the mountain plantain). The Fe’i plan tations are in distant branch valleys, far up on the flanks of the moun tains. The sun is high in the heavens when he returns, bearing a load that would break the back of the average white man. A dip in the river, and it is time to prepare the ahimaa (native oven). When prepared and covered, the ahimaa needs no atten tion; so our neighbour refreshes his weary body by taking a nap.
This is usually the hour the explor ing tourist appears on the scene to take notes on the effortless and care free life of the tropics.
After his repast, our neighbour goes to his coconut plantation, and the back-wearying task of making copra, which need not be described here.
Next, his taro patch demands his at tention—a labour of no small diffi culty as he stands in the deep mud under the burning rays of the sun.
During the late hours of the after noon, we see him occupied with the hundred and one small chores of the farmstead. Perhaps he has an hour or two of repose after the sun has gone down. Then, the sound of a conch-shell trumpet summons him to the shore—the hour for fishing is at hand.
THE lore of the fisherman in these waters is as intricate as the art of the astrologer. The nights of the moon, the ebb and flow of the sea,
the run of certain fish, the lurking place in coral pockets of other species, the types and materials of hooks and lines, the varieties of bait and lures, are elements which must be acquired by study, observation and practice.
They are the fruit of centuries of ancestral experience.
Our neighbour is learned in the wisdom of the sea; but it is midnight before he returns to shore, laden with a supply sufficient for his family and, perhaps, a string or two of fish to send to market or to distribute among his less fortunate companions.
He is happy in his life and what that life bestows upon him. He differs from his white brother in that he goes about his tasks with easy grace, with contentment in his heart and a song upon his lips, instead of filling the forums, newspapers and hoardings of his community with the clamour of his woes.
There is one matter about which the travelogues and brochures do not err: The islands shimmer—from elec tric lights by night, and from the glass windows of European houses along the coast by day. And mystery there is in abundance; not the least of which is the mystery of how—with low prices of copra and other Islands products— the hundreds of latest type stream line motors which crowd the high ways, are financed. But to speculate on anything connected with modern finance is to fish in very deep waters, too profound for our understanding.