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Day after day wore on, and still there was no perceptible change
in the conduct of the Islanders towards me. Gradually I lost
all knowledge of the regular recurrence of the days of the week,
and sunk insensibly into that kind of apathy which ensues after
some violent outbreak of despair. My limb suddenly healed, the
swelling went down, the pain subsided, and I had every reason
to suppose I should soon completely recover from the affliction
that had so long tormented me.

As soon as I was enabled to ramble about the valley in company
with the natives, troops of whom followed me whenever I
sallied out of the house, I began to experience an elasticity of mind
which placed me beyond the reach of those dismal forebodings
to which I had so lately been a prey. Received wherever I
went with the most deferential kindness; regaled perpetually
with the most delightful fruits; ministered to by dark-eyed
nymphs; and enjoying besides all the services of the devoted
Kory-Kory, I thought that, for a sojourn among cannibals, no man
could have well made a more agreeable one.

To be sure there were limits set to my wanderings. Toward
the sea my progress was barred by an express prohibition of the
savages; and after having made two or three ineffectual attempts
to reach it, as much to gratify my curiosity as anything else, I
gave up the idea. It was in vain to think of reaching it by

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stealth, since the natives escorted me in numbers wherever I
went, and not for one single moment that I can recall to mind
was I ever permitted to be alone.

The green and precipitous elevations that stood ranged around
the head of the vale where Marheyo's habitation was situated
effectually precluded all hope of escape in that quarter, even if I
could have stolen away from the thousand eyes of the savages.

But these reflections now seldom obtruded upon me; I gave
myself up to the passing hour, and if ever disagreeable thoughts
arose in my mind, I drove them away. When I looked around
the verdant recess in which I was buried, and gazed up to the
summits of the lofty eminence that hemmed me in, I was well
disposed to think that I was in the “Happy Valley,” and that
beyond those heights there was naught but a world of care and
anxiety.

As I extended my wanderings in the valley and grew more
familiar with the habits of its inmates, I was fain to confess that,
despite the disadvantages of his condition, the Polynesian savage,
surrounded by all the luxurious provisions of nature, enjoyed an
infinitely happier, though certainly a less intellectual existence,
than the self-complacent European.

The naked wretch who shivers beneath the bleak skies, and
starves among the inhospitable wilds of Terra-del-Fuego, might
indeed be made happier by civilisation, for it would alleviate his
physical wants. But the voluptuous Indian, with every desire
supplied, whom Providence has bountifully provided with all the
sources of pure and natural enjoyment, and from whom are
removed so many of the ills and pains of life—what has he to
desire at the hands of Civilisation? She may “cultivate his
mind,”—may “elevate his thoughts,”—these I believe are the
established phrases—but will he be the happier? Let the once
smiling and populous Hawaiian islands, with their now diseased,
starving, and dying natives, answer the question. The

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missionaries may seek to disguise the matter as they will, but the facts
are incontrovertible; and the devoutest Christian who visits that
group with an unbiased mind, must go away mournfully asking—
“Are these, alas! the fruits of twenty-five years of enlightening?”

In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though
few and simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed;
but Civilisation, for every advantage she imparts, holds
a hundred evils in reserve;—the heart-burnings, the jealousies,
the social rivalries, the family dissensions, and the thousand self-inflicted
discomforts of refined life, which make up in units the
swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown among these
unsophisticated people.

But it will be urged that these shocking unprincipled wretches
are cannibals. Very true; and a rather bad trait in their character
it must be allowed. But they are such only when they
seek to gratify the passion of revenge upon their enemies; and I
ask whether the mere eating of human flesh so very far exceeds
in barbarity that custom which only a few years since was practised
in enlightened England:—a convicted traitor, perhaps a
man found guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlike heinous
crimes, had his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowels
dragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into
four quarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted
to rot and fester among the public haunts of men!

The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner
of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry
on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their
train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized
man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.

His remorseless cruelty is seen in many of the institutions of
our own favored land. There is one in particular lately adopted
in one of the States of the Union, which purports to have been

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dictated by the most merciful considerations. To destroy our
malefactors piece-meal, drying up in their veins, drop by drop,
the blood we are too chicken-hearted to shed by a single blow
which would at once put a period to their sufferings, is deemed
to be infinitely preferable to the old-fashioned punishment of gibbeting—
much less annoying to the victim, and more in accordance
with the refined spirit of the age; and yet how feeble is all
language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches,
whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to
perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population!

But it is needless to multiply the examples of civilized barbarity;
they far exceed in the amount of misery they cause the
crimes which we regard with such abhorrence in our less enlightened
fellow-creatures.

The term “Savage” is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed,
when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every
kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilisation,
I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness
of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders
sent to the United States as Missionaries, might be quite as useful
as an equal number of Americans despatched to the Islands in a
similar capacity.

I once heard it given as an instance of the frightful depravity
of a certain tribe in the Pacific, that they had no word in their
language to express the idea of virtue. The assertion was
unfounded; but were it otherwise, it might be met by stating that
their language is almost entirely destitute of terms to express
the delightful ideas conveyed by our endless catalogue of civilized
crimes.

In the altered frame of mind to which I have referred, every
object that presented itself to my notice in the valley struck me
in a new light, and the opportunities I now enjoyed of observing
the manners of its inmates, tended to strengthen my favorable

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impressions. One peculiarity that fixed my admiration was the
perpetual hilarity reigning through the whole extent of the vale.
There seemed to be no cares, griefs, troubles, or vexations, in all
Typee. The hours tripped along as gaily as the laughing couples
down a country dance.

There were none of those thousand sources of irritation that
the ingenuity of civilized man has created to mar his own felicity.
There were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no
bills payable, no debts of honor in Typee; no unreasonable tailors
and shoemakers, perversely bent on being paid; no duns of any
description; no assault and battery attorneys, to foment discord,
backing their clients up to a quarrel, and then knocking their
heads together; no poor relations, everlastingly occupying the
spare bed-chamber, and diminishing the elbow room at the family
table; no destitute widows with their children starving on the
cold charities of the world; no beggars; no debtors' prisons; no
proud and hard-hearted nabobs in Typee; or to sum up all in one
word—no Money! “That root of all evil” was not to be found
in the valley.

In this secluded abode of happiness there were no cross old
women, no cruel step-dames, no withered spinsters, no love-sick
maidens, no sour old bachelors, no inattentive husbands, no melancholy
young men, no blubbering youngsters, and no squalling
brats. All was mirth, fun, and high good humor. Blue devils,
hypochondria, and doleful dumps, went and hid themselves among
the nooks and crannies of the rocks.

Here you would see a parcel of children frolicking together the
live-long day, and no quarrelling, no contention, among them.
The same number in our own land could not have played together
for the space of an hour without biting or scratching one another.
There you might have seen a throng of young females, not filled
with envyings of each other's charms, nor displaying the ridiculous
affectations of gentility, nor yet moving in whalebone corsets,

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like so many automatons, but free, inartificially happy, and unconstrained.

There were some spots in that sunny vale where they would
frequently resort to decorate themselves with garlands of flowers.
To have seen them reclining beneath the shadows of one of the
beautiful groves; the ground about them strewn with freshly
gathered buds and blossoms, employed in weaving chaplets and
necklaces, one would have thought that all the train of Flora
had gathered together to keep a festival in honor of their mistress.

With the young men there seemed almost always some matter
of diversion or business on hand that afforded a constant variety
of enjoyment. But whether fishing, or carving canoes, or polishing
their ornaments, never was there exhibited the least sign of
strife or contention among them.

As for the warriors, they maintained a tranquil dignity of demeanor,
journeying occasionally from house to house, where they
were always sure to be received with the attention bestowed upon
distinguished guests. The old men, of whom there were many in
the vale, seldom stirred from their mats, where they would recline
for hours and hours, smoking and talking to one another with all
the garrulity of age.

But the continual happiness, which so far as I was able to judge
appeared to prevail in the valley, sprung principally from that all-pervading
sensation which Rousseau has told us he 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. During
the whole period of my stay I saw but one invalid among them;
and on their smooth clear skins you observed no blemish or mark
of disease.

The general repose, however, upon which I have just been
descanting, was broken in upon about this time by an event
which proved that the islanders were not entirely exempt from

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those occurrences which disturb the quiet of more civilized communities.

Having now been a considerable time in the valley, I began
to feel surprised that the violent hostility subsisting between its
inhabitants, and those of the adjoining bay of Happar, should
never have manifested itself in any warlike encounter. Although
the valiant Typees would often by gesticulations declare their
undying hatred against their enemies, and the disgust they felt at
their cannibal propensities; although they dilated upon the manifold
injuries they had received at their hands, yet with a forbearance
truly commendable, they appeared patiently to sit down
under their grievances, and to refrain from making any reprisals.
The Happars, entrenched behind their mountains, and never even
showing themselves on their summits, did not appear to me to
furnish adequate cause for that excess of animosity evinced towards
them by the heroic tenants of our vale, and I was inclined
to believe that the deeds of blood attributed to them had been
greatly exaggerated.

On the other hand, as the clamors of war had not up to this
period disturbed the serenity of the tribe, I began to distrust the
truth of those reports which ascribed so fierce and belligerent a
character to the Typee nation. Surely, thought I, all these terrible
stories I have heard about the inveteracy with which they
carried on the feud, their deadly intensity of hatred, and the diabolical
malice with which they glutted their revenge upon the
inanimate forms of the slain, are nothing more than fables, and I
must confess that I experienced something like a sense of regret
at having my hideous anticipations thus disappointed. I felt in
some sort like a 'prentice boy who, going to the play in the expectation
of being delighted with a cut-and-thrust tragedy, is
almost moved to tears of disappointment at the exhibition of a
genteel comedy.

I could not avoid thinking that I had fallen in with a greatly

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traduced people, and I moralized not a little upon the disadvantage
of having a bad name, which in this instance had given a tribe of
savages, who were as pacific as so many lambkins, the reputation
of a confederacy of giant-killers.

But subsequent events proved that I had been a little too premature
in coming to this conclusion. One day about noon, happening
to be at the Ti, I had lain down on the mats with several of
the chiefs, and had gradually sunk into a most luxurious siesta,
when I was awakened by a tremendous outcry, and starting up
beheld the natives seizing their spears and hurrying out, while
the most puissant of the chiefs, grasping the six muskets which
were ranged against the bamboos, followed after, and soon disappeared
in the groves. These movements were accompanied by
wild shouts, in which “Happar, Happar,” greatly predominated.
The islanders were now to be seen running past the Ti, and
striking across the valley to the Happar side. Presently I heard
the sharp report of a musket from the adjoining hills, and then a
burst of voices in the same direction. At this the women who
had congregated in the groves, set up the most violent clamors,
as they invariably do here as elsewhere on every occasion of excitement
and alarm, with a view of tranquillizing their own minds
and disturbing other people. On this particular occasion they
made such an outrageous noise, and continued it with such perseverance,
that for awhile, had entire volleys of musketry been fired
off in the neighboring mountains, I should not have been able to
have heard them.

When this female commotion had a little subsided I listened
eagerly for further information. At last bang went another shot,
and then a second volley of yells from the hills. Again all was
quiet, and continued so for such a length of time that I began to
think the contending armies had agreed upon a suspension of hostilities;
when pop went a third gun, followed as before with a
yell. After this, for nearly two hours nothing occurred worthy

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of comment, save some straggling shouts from the hill-side, sounding
like the halloos of a parcel of truant boys who had lost themselves
in the woods.

During this interval I had remained standing on the piazza of
the “Ti,” which directly fronted the Happar mountain, and with
no one near me but Kory-Kory and the old superannuated savages
I have before described. These latter never stirred from their
mats, and seemed altogether unconscious that anything unusual
was going on.

As for Kory-Kory, he appeared to think that we were in the
midst of great events, and sought most zealously to impress me
with a due sense of their importance. Every sound that reached
us conveyed some momentous item of intelligence to him. At
such times, as if he were gifted with second sight, he would go
through a variety of pantomimic illustrations, showing me the
precise manner in which the redoubtable Typees were at that
very moment chastising the insolence of the enemy. “Mehevi
hanna pippee nuee Happar,” he exclaimed every five minutes,
giving me to understand that under that distinguished captain the
warriors of his nation were performing prodigies of valor.

Having heard only four reports from the muskets, I was led to
believe that they were worked by the islanders in the same manner
as the Sultan Solyman's ponderous artillery at the siege of
Byzantium, one of them taking an hour or two to load and train.
At last, no sound whatever proceeding from the mountains, I concluded
that the contest had been determined one way or the other.
Such appeared, indeed, to be the case, for in a little while a courier
arrived at the “Ti,” almost breathless with his exertions,
and communicated the news of a great victory having been
achieved by his countrymen: “Happar poo arva!—Happar poo
arva!” (the cowards had fled). Kory-Kory was in ecstasies, and
commenced a vehement harangue, which, so far as I understood
it, implied that the result exactly agreed with his expectations,

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and which, moreover, was intended to convince me that it would
be a perfectly useless undertaking, even for an army of fire-eaters,
to offer battle to the irresistible heroes of our valley. In all
this I of course acquiesced, and looked forward with no little
interest to the return of the conquerors, whose victory I feared
might not have been purchased without cost to themselves.

But here I was again mistaken; for Mehevi, in conducting his
warlike operations, rather inclined to the Fabian than to the Bonapartean
tactics, husbanding his resources and exposing his troops
to no unnecessary hazards. The total loss of the victors in this
obstinately contested affair was, in killed, wounded, and missing—
one forefinger and part of a thumb-nail (which the late proprietor
brought along with him in his hand), a severely contused arm,
and a considerable effusion of blood flowing from the thigh of a
chief, who had received an ugly thrust from a Happar spear.
What the enemy had suffered I could not discover, but I presume
they had succeeded in taking off with them the bodies of their
slain.

Such was the issue of the battle, as far as its results came
under my observation: and as it appeared to be considered an
event of prodigious importance, I reasonably concluded that the
wars of the natives were marked by no very sanguinary traits.
I afterwards learned how the skirmish had originated. A number
of the Happars had been discovered prowling for no good purpose
on the Typee side of the mountain; the alarm sounded, and the
invaders, after a protracted resistance, had been chased over the
frontier. But why had not the intrepid Mehevi carried the war
into Happar? Why had he not made a descent into the hostile
vale, and brought away some trophy of his victory—some materials
for the cannibal entertainment which I had heard usually
terminated every engagement? After all, I was much inclined
to believe that these shocking festivals must occur very rarely
among the islanders, if, indeed, they ever take place.

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For two or three days the late event was the theme of general
comment; after which the excitement gradually wore away, and
the valley resumed its accustomed tranquillity.