The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Richard Holmes
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Otheothea, Obadee, &c. all behav’d very decently. After dinner Obadee, who had been for some time absent, returnd to the fort. Oborea desired he might not be let in, his countenance was however so melancholy that we could not but admit him. He looked most piteously at Oborea, she most disdainfully at him. She seems to us to act in the character of a Ninon d’Enclos who, satiated with her lover, resolves to change him at all events. The more so as I am offered, if I please, to supply his place! But I am at present otherwise engag’d; indeed was I free as air, her Majesties person is not the most desireable.
Other mishaps ensued towards the end of the month. Banks, Cook and Solander had decided on an expedition to explore the western end of the bay, and to bargain for some wild pigs rumoured to be held by the local chieftain, Dootah. Banks was followed solicitously up the coast by queen Oborea and her entourage in their large and comfortable outrigger canoes. When the expedition was benighted in chief Dootah’s village (no accommodation being offered), Banks agreed to separate from the others and sleep in the queen’s well-appointed canoe, which had a cabin constructed between the floats.
As he explained in his journal, he and the queen had naturally removed all their clothes. ‘We went to bed early as is the custom here: I stripped myself for the greater convenience of sleeping as the night was hot. Oborea insisted that my cloths should be put into her custody, otherwise she said they would certainly be stolen. I readily submitted and laid down to sleep with all imaginable tranquility.’
The next morning Banks awoke to find almost all his kit missing-his handsome nankeen jacket with its fine brass buttons, his breeches, his waistcoat, his much-prized pistols and even his powder-horn. All had been-most unfortunately, murmured the queen-stolen in the night. After unavailing searches and appeals, Banks was faced by the prospect of a shame-faced retreat to Fort Venus with neither the promised pigs, nor his precious pistols, or even most of his clothes. Queen Oborea seems to have enacted a form of revenge. She supplied Banks with Tahitian shawls and blankets to replace his European clothes, and bade him farewell. For once, Banks was distinctly unamused: ‘I made a motley apearance, my dress being half English and half Indian. Dootahah soon after made his apearance; I pressed him to recover my Jacket but neither he nor Oborea would take the least step towards it so that I am almost inclind to believe that they acted principals in the theft.’36
Any resentful feelings were swept aside the following afternoon. Rounding the tip of the bay, they looked out to sea and saw something wholly unexpected and ‘truly surprising’. This was the astonishing and never-to-be-forgotten sight, far out on the unprotected edge of the lagoon, of a group of dark Tahitian heads bobbing amidst the enormous dark-blue Pacific waves. At first Banks thought they had been flung out of their canoes and were drowning. Then he realised that the Tahitians were surfing.
No European had ever witnessed-or at least recorded-this strange, extreme and quintessentially South Seas sport before. It left Banks amazed by the courage and dexterity of the Tahitian surfers, and the beauty and nonchalant grace with which they mastered the huge and terrifying Pacific rollers: ‘It was in a place where the shore was not guarded by a reef as is usualy the case, consequently a high surf fell upon the shore. A more dreadfull one I have not often seen: no European boat could have landed in it and I think no Europaean who had by any means got into [it] could possibly have saved his life, as the shore was coverd with pebbles and large stones. In the midst of these breakers 10 or 12 Indians were swimming.’
Here the power of wild nature was not tamed, but was harnessed by human beings; and they evidently revelled in it. The Tahitians had developed what were clearly surfboards, constructed out of the smooth, curved ends of old canoes. They were scornful of all danger, and exultant in their physical skills. ‘Whenever a surf broke near them [they] dived under it with infinite ease, rising up on the other side; but their chief amusement was carried on by the stern of an old canoe. With this before them they swam out as far as the outermost breach, then one or two would get into it and opposing the blunt end to the breaking wave were hurried in with incredible swiftness. Sometimes they were carried almost ashore, but generally the wave broke over them before they were half way. In which case the[y] dived and quickly rose on the other side with the canoe in their hands, which was towed out again and the same method repeated.’
Most extraordinary of all, this perilous activity evidently had absolutely no practical purpose or possible use. It was nothing to do with fishing, or transport, or navigation. The Tahitians did it for the sheer, inexhaustible delight of the thing. It was a complete Paradise sport: ‘We stood admiring this very wonderfull scene for full half an hour, in which time no one of the actors attempted to come ashore but all seemed most highly entertained with their strange diversion.’37
Some Tahitian ceremonies were carefully organised, and suitable for all the Endeavour’s crew, such as the afternoon of naked wrestling organised by queen Oborea. Others were less official. One morning a number of young women arrived by canoe, and were offered to Banks in a curiously provoking ceremony
12 May. While I sat trading in the boat at the door of the fort a double Canoe came with several women and one man under the awning. The Indians round me made signs that I should go out and meet them…Tupia who stood by me acted as my deputy in receiving them…Another man then came forward having in his arms a large bundle of cloth. This he opend out and spread it piece by piece on the ground between the women and me. It consisted of nine pieces. Three were first laid. The foremost of the women, who seemed to be the principal, then stepped upon them and quickly unveiling all her charms gave me a most convenient opportunity of admiring them by turning herself gradualy round.
Further pieces of cloth were then laid out in front of Banks, and the woman stepped closer and repeated her slow, smiling, naked gyrations. No awkwardness seems to have been felt on either side. ‘She then once more displayed her naked beauties and immediately marchd up to me, a man following her and doubling up the cloth as he came forwards which she immediately made me understand was intended as a present for me. I took her by the hand and led her to the tents acompanied by another woman her friend. To both of them I made presents but could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour.’
This is clearly a seduction scene, and the unnamed Tahitian man is bartering the woman. Yet there is no gloating in Banks’s entry; nor is it clear whether he took advantage of this frank proposal. Cook also witnessed this scene, and remarked that the young woman acted ‘with as much Innocency as one could possibly conceive’.38
By mid-June Banks was increasingly prepared to abandon European inhibitions, including his clothes. He noted frequently, ‘I lay in the woods last night as I very often did,’ by which one can understand he was probably with Otheothea. On 10 June his journal records how he stripped off, had his body covered with charcoal and white wood ash, and danced ceremonially with a witch doctor (Heiva). He was joined by two naked women and a boy, and together they danced through the length of the village, past the gate of Fort Venus, and along the shore.
It must have been an extraordinary sight, the expedition’s chief botanist whirling past the marine guards in the sunlight. But this Tahitian ceremony was not at all what it might have appeared to uninstructed European eyes. It was not an erotic rite, but a dance of ritual mourning. Banks and the young women were taking the part of ancestral ghosts (Ninevehs). ‘Tubourai was the Heiva, the three others and myself were the Nineveh. He put on his dress, most Fantastical tho not unbecoming…I was next prepard by stripping off my European cloths and putting me on a small strip of cloth round my waist, the only garment I was allowed to have, but I had no pretensions to be ashamed of my nakedness for neither of the women were a bit more coverd than myself. They then began to smut me and themselves with charcoal and water, the Indian boy was compleatly black, the women and myself as low as our shoulders. We then set out. Tubourai began by praying twice, once near the Corps again near his own house…To the fort then we went to the surprize of our freinds and affright of the Indians who were there, for they every where fly before the Heiva like sheep before a wolf.’ The dancing continued along the shore, and went on for the rest of the afternoon, ‘After which we repaird home, the