The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-06-06
THE HEART OF SAVAGERY
A TRAGEDY OF BEACHOoMBERs IN
THE FAR AWAY SOUTH SEAS.

Wanderers From Civilization on
Lonely Isle of the Pacific Murder Done
Without Excitement by ChiIdlike Ma
tives-Artistic Lying by Woman to
Conceal the Crime.
I The South Sea is full of obscure trag-
edies. Tragedy was often the end of
adventure, and then, too, none but the
most venturesome or the most aban-
doned of white men sought to live
among the wild islanders in the days,
not SC far remote, when the missionary
had not yet introduced his stucco
churches and taught the natives the
price of an axe or a handful of ship
biscuit. This tale of one of the forgot
ten tragedies is drawn from an official
document on which forty years OF
slumbering in forgotten pigeonhole
has served to dim the writing and to
dull the imprint of the lion and the I'M
icorn with which British consul
made the paper official. To write an ac-
count of a murder on sixteen sheets of
~
seal with the royal arms-that may
pass sometimes as just the same as
avenging it.
Suvarrow is as lonely a group Of des-
olation as it is possible to find in that
scantily Travelled region of the South
Seas which lies to the eastward of Sa-
moa and before reaching such popu-
lous centres as Tahiti and Rarotonga.
Other islands have the picturesque fea-
lures of towering mountains, verdure-
clad to their summit crags, the grace of
waving cocoanut palms fringing every
beach with giant leaves. Suvarrow is
but ring of sand banks skirting la
COON filled with coral groves; the only
trees the stunted pandanus set on a
group of prop-like roots. Other islands
have their peopling of brown skinned
folk, possibly treacherous and always
to be treated as interiors by that love-
ly creature, the beachcomber of these
seas yet human in their desire for
gaudy toys and the timed goods on
which the white man feeds. Suvarrow
is marked on the charts as uninhabi-
ted and, therefore, is not a port of call
for the vagrant whaler in his search
for sperm, the trader or the black
birder. Yet now and again little island
colonies may be found on the bare
sands of the atoll, for in the lagoon
grow the pearl oyster and the beche-de-
mer, which Cinnamon eat, and on the
sands great turtles come to lay their
eggs by night. Hence beachcombers
mysteriously wandering beyond the
confines Of civilization at odd times
ho, ell re IN nf th a
wealth Of tortoise shell, pearl shell and
trepang the sea affords. This is the
story of one such colony on the desolate
atoll of Suvarrow, a tale whose events
We're complete in 1858, but have never
yet been made known beyond the COM
bers of South Sea beaches.
In the early months of 1857 Thomas
Charlton of Martha's Vineyard, run
away hand from a Nantucket whaler,
was living on the island of Manahiki.
When he was fishing one day in canoe
outside the coral reef a sudden squall
carried him and his party of islanders
out of sight of land and left them
adrift and undirected upon the ocean.
South Sea tradition is a mass of tales
of such involuntary voyaging. With
such help as sailor could get from
dead reckoning and a knowledge of the
set of the trade winds, Charlton man
aged to bring his canoe to Suvarrow
and there established his colony Of gen.
tie Manahikians. In addition to his
wife Sumaria, harlton, or Tamu, as he
was called in the liquid speech of the
islands, numbered in the census of his
settlement on the sands eight SOULS
Here and his wife Kokorariki Ga Pau
motu woman from the far eastern is
land away to windward of Tahiti, and,
as the event proved, a shrewd and con-
scienceless woman), Kaital and his
wife, and the single men Ngere, Taa-
rau, Volta, Otea and Vaimau. With
true Polynesian apathy, these people
made the best they could of a bad at
fair, built them houses near a source of
water, and took up the thread of life
where it had been broken by the squall
at Manahilxi, scores of leagues away.
There was food on the island and wa
ter-that is enough for a colony of folk
whose needs are simple.
They were destined to live not long
alone. Captain Sam Sustenance was
sailing those seas in his topsail schoon-
er Dart. Captain Sustenance might not
be classed among the elect. He was
not a good man, even according to the
standard of these waters, where the
only good thing af1oat was the "socie
tvs brig" said society being the Lon
don Missionary society, which has pio-
neered the South Pacific since Cooks
voyage of discovery. But Sustenance
was such a man as best suited the ear
ly times of sea trading, enough of a
mere merchantmen to satisfy the curl
osity of the infrequent naval vessels
cruising among the islands for the sake
of the moral effect, enough of a bucca-
neer to have dollars to jingle on the
Circular Quay in Sydney before a
grand carouse in the Currency Lass
public house. From end to end of the
Pacific Sam Sustenance was known by
the name of Uru-Uru, which the island
ers had given him. At Penrhyn Island,
on August list, 1857, he engaged an Eng
lsh beachcomber, Joe Bird, to superin-
tend the party of native pearl divers
whom he shipped at the same time.
There were eighteen men and several
women in the party. The Penrhyn folk
are widely different from the gentle and
timorous Manahikians. Sour and
gloomy at all times, they are capable