"At daylight, Tahiti, an island which must for ever remain classical to the voyager in the South Sea, was in view. At a distance the appearance was not attractive. The luxuriant vegetation of the lower part could not yet be seen, and as the clouds rolled past, the wildest and most precipitous peaks showed themselves towards the centre of the island. As soon as we anchored in Matavai Bay, we were surrounded by canoes. This was our Sunday, but the Monday of Tahiti: if the case had been reversed, we should not have received a single visit; for the injunction not to launch a canoe on the sabbath is rigidly obeyed. After dinner we landed to enjoy all the delights produced by the first impressions of a new country, and that country the charming Tahiti. A crowd of men, women, and children, was collected on the memorable Point Venus, ready to receive us with laughing, merry faces." Chapter XVIII-Voyage of the Beagle
After 1.5 year absence, Sarah, Josh and James return to the podcast to finish Voyage of the Beagle. We left Charles out in the Pacific Ocean, sailing the 3,200 miles from the Galapagos to Tahiti. It took the Beagle nearly a month to cover that distance and the sailing was difficult. Tahiti was a welcome sight.
A long and brilliantly-white beach is capped by a margin of green vegetation; and the strip, looking either way, rapidly narrows away in the distance, and sinks beneath the horizon. From the mast-head a wide expanse of smooth water can be seen within the ring. These low hollow coral islands bear no proportion to the vast ocean out of which they abruptly rise; and it seems wonderful, that such weak invaders are not overwhelmed, by the all-powerful and never-tiring waves of that great sea, miscalled the Pacific.
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| An Aerial View Of Tahiti... By Sylvain Grandadam |
Darwin enjoyed the hospitality of the native Tahitians and the rich abundance of fruits, roasted bananas and pineapples, which he admitted tasted better than any pineapple cultivated in a hothouse in England. While in Tahiti, Darwin embarked on the last of his difficult and challenging hikes when he went with two native Tahitians to hike into the valley of Tia-auru. When I lived in Kauai I hiked around the north shore and I imagine the landscape there is not much different from the Tahitian landscape, both are volcanic islands with Kauai being older (5 million years old) than Tahiti (1.6 million years old).
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| View of a valley in Kauai that looks like Tahitian landscape |
In New Zealand Darwin noted the cultural tradition of the native New Zealanders (Maori) tattooing their lips and areas around their face. We discussed how Darwin recognized the role of fashion in a culture and admitted that his bare un-tattooed face was as unsettling to the Maoris as their inked faces were to him.
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| http://servatius.blogspot.com/2015/10/maori-couple-1880s-with-facial-tattoos.html |
A wonderful description of Maori traditional tattoos can be found here.
