Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

month of August, he says, I could creep about on my hands and knees.'

Being a little recovered, he was employed to instruct a few Indian children in the English language, to enable them to act as interpreters to the American ships which frequently touch at these islands: just at this time the Neva arrived from Sitcha, on her way to the Sandwich islands, and Campbell being desirous of returning to Europe, which, if once there, he was sure to have frequent opportunities of doing, was allowed a passage in that ship. On anchoring in the harbour of Hanaroora, on the south side of the island of Wahoo, a number of natives crowded round the vessel, and among them Tamaahmaah, the king, in a double canoe: the captain received him at the gangway, and shook hands with him when he came upon deck; he was dressed as an European, in a blue coat and grey pantaloons. In another canoe came Tamina, one of his queens, whose notice was attracted and compassion excited by the appearance of our traveller; she invited him to live in her house, and sent him ashore in her own canoe; at the same time the captain recommended him to the notice of the king, by informing him that he could not only make and repair the sails of his vessels, but also weave the cloth of which they were made: the king assured him that he should be treated with the utmost kindness.

On landing he was conducted to the house occupied by the two queens: he was invited to join them at their meals; but the king's brother-in-law, having informed him that if he did so, he would not be allowed afterwards to eat with men, he declined the honour. At the departure of the Neva the king invited him to take his meals in his own eating-house, and a young American of the name of Moxely was to eat with him, and act as his interpreter.

His first employment was overhauling the sails of the king's vessels, and repairing such as were out of order; he was then desired to weave some canvass. To enable him to do this he asked one Boyd, a carpenter, to make him a loom, which he declined, from an illiberal notion held by many of the white people there, that the natives should be taught nothing that would render them independent of strangers.' Campbell, however, contrived to patch up a loom; the women spun him thread from the fibres of one of the plants, which they use for fishing lines, and he produced some canvass, of which the king was so proud that he shewed it to every captain that arrived as a specimen of the manufacture of his country.

In the month of November the king was pleased to grant me about sixty acres of land, situated upon the Wymannoo or Pearl-water, an inlet of the sea about twelve miles to the west of Hanaroora. I imme diately removed thither; and it being Macaheité time, during which

canoes

canoes are tabbooed, I was carried on men's shoulders. We passed by foot-paths winding through an extensive and fertile plain, the whole of which is in the highest state of cultivation. Every stream was carefully embanked, to supply water for the Taro beds. Where there was no water the land was under crops of yams and sweet potatoes. The roads and numerous houses are shaded by cocoa-nut trees, and the sides of the mountains covered with wood to a great height. We halted two or three times, and were treated by the natives with the utmost hospitality. My farm, called Wymannoo, was upon the east side of the river, four or five miles from its mouth. Fifteen people with their families resided upon it, who cultivated the ground as my servants. There were three houses upon the property, but I found it most agreeable to live with one of my neighbours, and get what I wanted from my own land. This person's name was William Stevenson, a native of Borrowstouness. He had been a convict and escaped from New South Wales; but was, notwithstanding, an industrious man, and conducted himself, in general, with great propriety. He had married a native, and had a family of several children. He was the first who introduced into the island the mode of distilling a spirit from the tee-root, of which, however, he became so fond, that the king was obliged to deprive him of his still.'pp. 145, 146.

A South Sea whaler, bound for England, put into the bay shortly after; and the wish to see his native country became so strong with our author, and the state of his feet, which had never healed, gave him such uneasiness, that he could not resist the opportunity now offered. On asking the king's permission, he inquired if he had any cause of complaint; he told him he had none, that he was sensible of his kindness, and that he was much better there than he could hope to be elsewhere, but that he was desirous to see his friends once more. The king said, If his belly told him to go he would do it; and that if mine told me so I was at liberty.'

He then desired me to give his compliments to King George. I told him that, though born in his dominions, I had never seen King George; and that even in the city where he lived, there were thousands who had never seen him. He expressed much surprize at this, and asked if he did not go about amongst his people, to learn their wants, as he did; I answered that he did not do it himself; but that he had men who did it for him. Tamaahmaah shook his head at this, and said that other people would never do it so well as he could himself.'— p. 149.

Campbell left the island, on which he had resided thirteen months, in March, 1810, with the deepest regret. While there, he says, I had experienced nothing but kindness and friendship from all ranks-from my much honoured master the king, down to the lowest native.' They doubled Cape Horn, in May, without the smallest difficulty, as indeed all now do in the frailest barks, with the exception of David Porter, Esq. late commander of the Ameri

can

can frigate Essex. Towards the end of the same month they entered the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, where our traveller, apprehensive of a mortification in his legs, got admitted into the Portugueze hospital De la Mesericordia. Here he remained six weeks, and was discharged uncured. Mr. Hill, the American Consul, gave him a jar of essence of spruce, which he brewed, and, with other trifling articles, sold to ships in the harbour: in this manner he saved as much money as enabled him to open a boarding-house for sailors. This, however, not succeeding, he set up a butcher's stall, and supplied the ships with fresh meat: a concern which promised better, when his house was broken into, his whole property in money and clothes stolen, and he again reduced to poverty. By 'the friendly aid, however, of a gentleman from Edinburgh, of the name of Lawrie, he was enabled to resume his business; but his health failing, and the sores of his legs remaining unhealed, he determined to return home; and, with this view, left Rio de Janeiro, after a stay of twenty-two months, in the brig Hazard, Captain Anderson, and arrived in the Clyde on the 21st April, 1812, after an absence of nearly six years. In Edinburgh the father of Mr. Lawrie presented him with a barrel organ, and he contrived to earn a miserable pittance by crawling about the streets of Edinburgh and Leith, grinding music, and selling a metrical history of his adventures. In process of time he learned to play on the violin, and found the sedentary employment of amusing the passengers of the Clyde steam-boat more suitable to his lamentable state, where, as before narrated, he was fortunately observed by the humane editor of the volume before us.

We have been thus prolix in detailing the adventures and sufferings of this poor sailor from a double motive; first, to endeavour to raise an interest in behalf of this unfortunate man, who is not only sensible of, but truly penitent for his offence of desertion from his Majesty's service, and breach of engagement with his employers; and secondly, to hold up, as an example* to our brave, but too frequently thoughtless tars, the hardships to which they expose themselves, by yielding to the fallacious offers made to induce them to break their engagements, and following the wild and irregular schemes of the unprincipled masters of American vessels, who seem to feel a malignant pleasure in seizing every opportunity first to ill-treat and then to defraud British seamen.

Campbell's book, however, is by no means confined to a narrative of his personal sufferings and adventures; there is much curi

* Could example teach, Campbell will not have lived in vain. His good conduct on board the Thames had already procured him the situation of sail-master's mate; and there can be no doubt, that if he had not deserted, he would now be in a state of permanent ease and comfort, instead of being condemned to hopeless years of suffering and distress.

ous

[ocr errors]

ous information respecting that particular island of the Sandwich group, called Wahoo, on which he resided, and more especially concerning the king, Tamaahmaah.- This person, though endowed by nature with more feeling, more energy, and more steadiness of conduct, than savages in general possess, has not made that progress in civilization which would entitle him to be ranked, as Mr. Smith is inclined to rank him, among those remarkable characters, who, like Alfred or Peter the Great, seem destined to hasten the progress of civilization.' He certainly bears a stronger resemblance, on a small scale, to Peter than to Alfred,-but the parallel,' after all, is not much in the manner of Plutarch; for he has done little if any thing, that we can find, to ameliorate the condition of his people. He has indeed kept them in better order, especially in their conduct towards strangers; and thus prevented the recurrence of those horrid murders which, till his reign, were so frequent as almost to deter navigators from communicating with those islands; but it is to be apprehended that the practice has been discontinued more from personal fear, than from any new feeling or principle of justice or humanity which he has awakened in their minds. Indeed we consider it as utterly vain to expect much moral improvement in any state of society, so long as the female part of it shall continue to be despised and degraded; and it does not appear that the women of the Sandwich islands have gained a single step in the estimation of the men or lost any part of their grossness of behaviour, since they were first visited by Captain Cook. We find no abatement of that offensively conspicuous wantonness' which Captain Vancouver so feelingly deplores, and to which, he says, 'in the whole of the South Sea Islands visited by him, no indecency on the part of the women was to be compared. While Campbell was on the island of Wahoo, the king's brother died, on which occasion, as part of the general mourning, a public prostitution of the women took place. On the captain of a ship in the harbour remonstrating with the king on such disgraceful scenes, he observed, that such was their custom and that he could not prevent it.

No great hopes of advancement in civilization are to be expected, while society remains in this state. The earliest and perhaps the deepest impressions are made on a child's mind while under the immediate protection of its mother; and the mother of a Sandwich islander is in no condition to communicate one amiable or virtuous feeling to her offspring. We are told by Campbell, that the favourite queen, Tamina, generally availed herself of her husband's performing his religious duties in the Morai, to get drunk, and that two Aleutian women, who had been left on the island, were her chosen companions on these occasions. The women, however, are not doomed to that degree of drudgery which it is their lot to undergo in most savage states: they are fond of finery like most of the sex,

fond

fond of singing, dancing and amusement; and if less agreeable and insinuating than the Otaheitans, by no means yield to them in personal charms; their features are equally good, their skin, though somewhat darker, is clean, clear and healthy, and their shape is superior-they are good humoured, but, as it would seem, not very brilliant.

[ocr errors]

An Englishman, of the name of James Beattie, a quondam hero of the sock and buskin, but now his Majesty's block-maker, fitted up a theatre, and got up Oscar and Malvina, which, Campbell observes, was originally a pantomime, but Beattie had words written for it. The part of Malvina was performed by the wife of Isaac Davies, another Englishman. As her knowledge of the English language extended not beyond the affirmative and negative monosyllables, her speeches were confined to yes and no; but she acted her part to admiration and gained great applause. The audience, says, did not seem to understand the play well; but were highly delighted with the after-piece, which represented a naval engagement-the scene was a forest, which unluckily caught fire in the heat of the action and nearly consumed the theatre.

he

It is much to be lamented that the white people dwelling among them and who at one time amounted, by Campbell's account, to nearly sixty, should not be of a better description: ten or twelve of them were convicts from New South Wales, rescued from the punishment due to their crimes by the American traders, out of mere wantonness; others were English, who complained of having been landed and left there by the same people, in order to defraud them of their wages; and the remainder Americans left behind by accident, or design. Some of them, Campbell says, were sober and industrious, but the greater part idle and dissolute, getting drunk. whenever an opportunity offered. A convict from New South Wales, as before observed, first introduced distillation into the islands, and the ill consequences both to the natives. and the whites are incalculable; and yet if, as Campbell says, ava or kava is giving way to the use of ardent spirits, pernicious as are the effects of the latter, they are by no means so destructive to the health as the former. This liquor, the juice of a root of the pepper tribe (piper methysticum), chewed and spit into a large bowl, and then diluted with water, was the exclusive beverage of the king and the chiefs. Its baneful effects were most apparent-the bodies of those who swallowed it being covered with a white scurf, their eyes red and inflamed, their limbs emaciated, and their whole frame trembling and paralytic. Almost every chief has now his still, which consists of an iron pot surmounted by a number of calabashes, with the bottoms sawn off and the joints luted. The plant employed, the

root

« AnteriorContinuar »