Omoo
Melville, Herman
Omoo
Herman Melville
Omoo
Preface
Nowhere, perhaps, are the proverbial characteristics of sailors shown under wilder aspects than in the South Seas. For the most part, the vessels navigating those remote waters are engaged in the Sperm Whale Fishery; a business which is not only peculiarly fitted to attract the most reckless seamen of all nations, but m various ways is calculated to foster in them a spirit of the utmost licence. These voyages, also, are unusually long and perilous; the only harbours accessible are among the barbarous or semi-civilised islands of Polynesia, or along the lawless western coast of South America. Hence, scenes the most novel, and not directly connected with the business of whaling, frequently occur among the crews of ships in the Pacific.
Without pretending to give any account of the whale-fishery (for the scope of the narrative does not embrace the subject), it is partly the object of this work to convey some idea of the kind of life to which allusion is made, by means of a circumstantial history of adventures befalling the author.
Another object proposed is, to give a familiar account of the present condition of the converted Polynesians, as affected by their promiscuous intercourse with foreigners, and the teachings of the missionaries, combined.
As a roving sailor, the author spent about three months in various parts of the islands of Tahiti and Imeeo, and under circumstances most favourable for correct observations on the social condition of the natives.
In every statement connected with missionary operations, a strict adherence to facts has, of course, been scrupulously observed; and in some instances, it has even been deemed advisable to quote previous voyagers, in corroboration of what is offered as the fruit of the author's own observations. Nothing but an earnest desire for truth and good has led him to touch upon this subject at all. And if he refrains from offering hints as to the best mode of remedying the evils which are pointed out, it is only because he thinks, that after being made acquainted with the facts, others are better qualified to do so.
Should a little jocoseness be shown upon some curious traits of the Tahitians, it proceeds from no intention to ridicule: things are merely described as, from their entire novelty, they first struck an unbiased observer.
The present narrative necessarily begins where Typee concludes, but has no further connection with the latter work. All, therefore, necessary for the reader to understand, who has not read Typee, is given in a brief introduction.
No journal was kept by the author during his wanderings in the South Seas; so that, in preparing the ensuing chapters for the press, precision with respect to dates would have been impossible; and every occurrence has been put down from simple recollection. The frequency, however, with which these incidents have been verbally related, has tended to stamp them upon the memory.
Although it is believed that one or two imperfect Polynesian vocabularies have been published, none of the Tahitian dialect has as yet appeared. At any rate, the author has had access to none whatever. In the use of the native words, therefore, he has been mostly governed by the bare recollection of sounds.
Upon several points connected with the history and ancient customs of Tahiti, collateral information has been obtained from the oldest books of South Sea voyages, and also from the Polynesian Researches of Ellis.
The title of the work – Omoo – is borrowed from the dialect of the Marquesas Islands, where, among other uses, the word signifies a rover, or rather, a person wandering from one island to another, like some of the natives known among their countrymen as ›Taboo kannakers.‹
In no respect does the author make pretensions to philosophic research. In a familiar way, he has merely described what he has seen; and if reflections are occasionally indulged in, they are spontaneous, and such as would very probably suggest themselves to the most casual observer.
NEW YORK,
January 28, 1847.
Adventures in the South Seas
Introduction
In the summer of 1842, the author of this narrative, as a sailor before the mast, visited the Marquesas Islands in an American South Seaman. At the island of Nukuheva he left his vessel, which afterward sailed without him. Wandering in the interior, he came upon the valley of Typee, inhabited by a primitive tribe of savages, from which valley a fellow-sailor who accompanied him soon afterward effected his escape. The author, however, was detained in an indulgent captivity for about the space of four months; at the end of which period, he escaped in a boat which visited the bay.
This boat belonged to a vessel in need of men, which had recently touched at a neighbouring harbour of the same island, where the captain had been informed of the author's detention in Typee. Desirous of adding to his crew, he sailed round thither, and ›hove to‹ off the mouth of the bay. As the Typees were considered hostile, the boat, manned by ›Taboo‹ natives from the other harbour, was then sent in, with an interpreter at their head, to procure the author's release. This was finally accomplished, though not without peril to all concerned. At the time of his escape, the author was suffering severely from lameness.
The boat having gained the open sea, the ship appeared in the distance. Here the present narrative opens.
Part I
Chapter I
My Reception Aboard
It was in the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-top-sail aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that broke the broad expanse of the ocean.
On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman's complexion in the tropics.
On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we advanced.
When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To say nothing of the savage boat's crew, panting with excitement, all gesture and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite curiosity. A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent adventure. Immediately on gaining the deck, they beset me on all sides with questions, the half of which I could not answer, so incessantly were they put.
As an instance of the curious coincidences which often befall the sailor, I must here mention that two countenances before me were familiar. One was that of an old man-of-war's-man, whose acquaintance I had made in Rio de Janeiro, at which place touched the ship in which I sailed from home. The other was a young man, whom, four years previous, I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool. I remembered parting with him at Prince's Dock Gates, in the midst of a swarm of police-officers, truckmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like.
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