725: In the nineteenth . . .
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 38 continues
[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters]
In the nineteenth century, Europeans brought to Rarotonga and the rest of the Cook Islands Christianity, smallpox, influenza, dysentery, and the slave trade. By 1888, when the British made the islands their protectorate, the indigenous population had been reduced to, according to some estimates, only a third of what it once had been. Zealous missionaries transformed Rarotongan society by employing islanders to watch over their neighbors for transgressions of religious (that is, Christian) laws, thereby introducing the kind of panoptic system of governmental control of individual life and thought that we have latterly witnessed in the fascist and communist states, citizen spying on citizen, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent.
Doubtless the missionaries were offended by the dances that Rarotongans performed in their worship of the fertility god Tangeroa, dances that the irrepressible Rarotongans are still wont to perform on a warm night under the light of the moon and the influence of beer or pineapple liquor. We do not think it appropriate to describe the suggestive gyrations of Rarotongan dancing in a guidebook intended for a wide general audience. They are, shall we say, erotic in the extreme.
You can get an idea of the music that accompanies these shocking dances by reciting a list of some of the names of the islands in the Cook group, surely the most euphonious names of islands anywhere. Just try saying, “Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Takutea, Manihiki, Pukapuka, Rakahanga,” a few times, and you’ll see what we mean.
For most of the year, the climate of these islands is the stuff of a beachcomber’s dreams, but devastating hurricanes may strike during the summer months (December–February), lending a note of uncertainty to life there, a bit of spice in the breadfruit. The animal lover in search of exotic wildlife will be coming to the wrong place, unless rats, bats, pigs, and dogs will do, but, oh, the flowers! They are everywhere, in profligate profusion, and the breezes are rich with the scent of them. Confronting the abundance—the bounty, if you will—of gorgeous flora, one is compelled to say that it must surely have been the aromas of these incredible flowers that gave the Maoris their notion of mana, that ess ential quality of a person, utterly intangible yet so powerful, so intoxicating, so alluring. It is quite possible for the traveler to drift into a kind of narcotic trance in the presence of the floral abundance of Rarotonga—the gardenia, jasmine, frangipani, and so many, many more. It seems that every day is scented anew, with a freshness that makes life seem a dream.
The clear waters of the lagoon, the powdery beaches, the muffled thud of the surf on the distant reef, and most of all the intoxicating beauty of the flowers, their heady scent—all that is enough to make one want to stay forever, almost enough to make one willing to endure a diet of breadfruit and bêche de mer—but we were born to wander, so off we must go to the next intriguing place.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 725, Mark Dorset considers Observation, Surveillance; and Dancing: Erotic from this episode.
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