St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-06-17

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A REINSTATED CHRISTIAN.
intelligence was at all commensurate with
the physical strength and courage of them
selves and their numerous and increasing
descendants, they could dictate the policy of
Polynesia.
These men have become so numerous that
they may be classed as a distinct race. They
are Europeans and Americans, and are
queer link between the highest civilization
and the savage types of Polynesia. They are
principally deserters, but some are ex-pirates,
and not a few the remnants of the crews Of
wrecked or abandoned ships, who have
lapsed without an effort into barbarity. They
are confined to no location, but are to be
found on every inhabited atol from Christmas
Island in the North Pacific to the Kermadec
group in the South.
The originals of these beach combers were
undoubtedly the crew of the ship Bounty,
which mutinied in these seas in 178S, sent
their captain, Bigh, and eighteen of his
friends adrift in a small boat, and then,
under leader named Christian, settled on
one of the small islands, killed off most of
the men, married the women, and for two
generations were lost to the world. Curious
F ly enough, when the half-breed descendants
of these mutineers were discovered, it was
found that they were a happy people, could
read and write, and We're more thoroughly
imbued with the teachings of Christ than
some of the missionaries who had been sent
out to save them. e..
It is impossible to make comparison be-
tween the beach-combing pioneers and the
early settlers in our own land, or in Aus
tralia. The success of English colonization
is entirely due to thefaet that the colonists,
instead of intermarryingr with the aborigines
as did the Latin colonists from Europe
brought with them into the new home their
wives and families and all the customs and
forms of the motherland, some of which were
gradually modified by their environment.
But the beach comber has reversed all this,
His purpose in leaving home was no doubt
to return on the same ship; but driven into
revolt by the actual or imagined cruelty of
his superfors, and captivated by the ease of
living and wedding in these purple isles, he
deserted, found wife among the simple
islanders, and at once lapsed back to the
condition of his ancestors of q thousand
years or more ago, and became thorough
savage.
Having seen so much of the beach comb
ers, and of our own squaw men, am firm
in the belief that the barrier that separates
US from our barbarious progenitors is much
slighter than we imagine, and that the most
civilized man has an underlined craving for
the primitive conditions. It is this spirit
hot -hrod lov fo 10
fashion rude implements of destruction;
and the same impulse asserts itself in mature
years in the almost universal love of hunting
and fishing. Knowing as do the poverty,
vice and degradation to be found within the
shadows of our churches, in our most CIV
iliZed centers, can well understand the re-
volt against such conditions, and how men,
many of them of good birth and well edu-
Gated, should willingly throw off the trammels
of law and civilization for the easy life and
perfect independence Of the beach comber.
To change slightly Tennyson's well-known
lines:
ssThey have burst each bond of habit,
They have wandered far away,
From island unto island,
At the gateways of the day."
For more than hundred years desertions
from ships of every class have been going on
in the Pacific, so that the half-breed de-
scendants of these men number tens of
thousands. Speaking with old ship captains,
I have learned that these deserters were
usually the brightest of their crews, young,
strong, vigorous men, who rebelled under
the harsh restraint on shipboard, and who
had no ties binding them to their homes, and
no morals that would make them averse to
the free and easy habits of the natives.
Among these beach combers I have seen
men over seventy years OF age, perfect giants
in strength and endurance. They dress like
the natives and the exposed parts Of their
bodies are quite as dark. They are, as
rule, more powerful than the natives, and they
surpass them in those qualities that are
thought to be peculiar to- the savage. They
can climb the highest and smoothest palms
with the dextsrity Of apes They wear no
foot covering, but can walk over the sharp
est coral, or volcanic rocks, as if on velvet
carpet. They make and manage canoes, and
they can swim and dive as well as if their
ancestors since thef food had been born on
these islands. ~
The beach comber is, the antipode of the
missionary, whom he heartily and openly
hates. When he, or bis father, or it may be
his grandfather, cast of civilization, he rid
himself at the same time of all his religious
teachings; and while he rarely adopted the
worship Of his savage associates, he readily
assumed such Of their customs as best
pleased himself. Foremost among these
customs, and the one ""-tinued with the