Saturday, 22 February 2014

Luxury Link 9



‘This may well be called the Cytheria of the southern hemisphere...where
 the earth without tillage produces both food and clothing, the trees
 loaded with the richest fruit, the carpet of nature spread with the most
 odiferous flowers, and the fair ones ever willing to fill your arms with
 love... contradicting an opinion propagated by philosophers of a less
 bountiful soil, who maintain that every virtuous or charitable act a man
 commits, is from selfish or interested views.’
                                                  George Hamilton, Surgeon Of the Pandora


Here, of course, was where it really all began. Below us was Faa'a Airport, reclaimed land on the offshore coral reef, beside the original island that, in less than thirty years, had been claimed by offshore European imaginations, and had claimed them back even more. Otaheite.
When Samuel Wallis’ Dolphin entered Matavai Bay in 1767, he had no idea that the physical integrity of his ship would fall into hard jeopardy, from the nails that would begin to go missing in his crew’s search for soft paradise. A year later, the deprived sailors on Bougainville’s Boudeuse, watched a smiling Tahitian girl climb onto their quarterdeck, and drop her pareu like a gauntlet. If Botticelli’s Birth of Venus had made a simultaneous appearance, she wouldn’t have held a candle. When Cook’s Endeavour arrived a year after that, to follow the Transit of Venus, his crew’s endeavours were similarly focused. The history of ships and Shangri-la culminated in Bligh’s Bounty entrance in 1788, and Edward’s Pandora pursuit of his mutineers, three years later.
Tahiti would have been paradise to any European, even without the months of abject misery any male crew would suffer just to get there. In a melange of recorded impressions from these first ships, the island itself was achingly beautiful.

‘We saw the whole coast full of Canoes, and the country hade the most
 Beautiful appearance its posable to Imagin, from the shore side one two
 and three miles Back...a fine Leavel country appears to be all laid out in
 plantations, and the regular built Houses seems to be without number,
 with Great Numbers of Cocoa Nut Trees and several other trees...all
 along the Coast. There is beautiful valleys between the Mountains- from
 the foot of the Mountains half way up the Country appears to be all fine
 pasture land- from that to the very tops of the Mountains is all full of tall
 Trees... The country is as beautiful as it could be, forests, fertile vales,
 streams and gardens make up a charming setting in which the
 inhabitants have located their houses... Nature was pleased to grant
 them perfect bodies... We found companies of men and women sitting
 under the shade of their fruit-trees: they all greeted us with signs of
 friendship: those who met us upon the road stood aside to let us pass
 by; everywhere we found hospitality, ease, innocent joy, and every
 appearance of happiness amongst them...We walk’d for 4 or 5 miles
 under groves of Cocoa nut and bread fruit trees loaded with a profusion
 of fruit and giving the most greatefull shade I have ever experienced,
 under these were the habitations of the people most of them without
 walls: in short the scene we saw was the truest picture of an arcadia of
 which we were going to be kings and the imagination can form...’

The Polynesian women, that came out to greet their boats, turned it into the Garden of Eden.

‘We have discovered a large, fertile and extremely populous Island in the
 South Seas... Women... endeavoured to engage the Attention of out
 Sailors, by exposing their beauties to their View... The men...pressed us
 to choose a woman, and to come on shore with her; and their gestures
 denoted in what manner we should form an acquaintance with her. It
 was very difficult, amidst such a sight, to keep at their work four
 hundred French sailors, who had seen no women for six months. In
 spite of all our precautions, a young girl came on board, and place
 herself upon the quarterdeck, near one of the hatchways, which was
 open, in order to give air to those who were heaving at the capstern
 below it. The girl carelessly dropt a cloth, which covered her, and
 appeared to the eyes of all beholders, such as Venus showed herself to
 the Phrygian shepherd, having indeed the celestial form of that
 goddess... At last our cares succeeded in keeping these bewitched
 fellows in order, though it was no less difficult to keep the command of
 ourselves... I was told by one of the Young Gentlemen that a new sort of
 trade took up most of their attention that day, but it might be more
 properly called the old trade...The Women were far from being Coy. For
 when a Man Found a Girl to his Mind, which he might Easily Do
 Amongst so many, there was not much Ceremony on Either Side, and I
 believe whoever comes here after will find Evident Proofs that they are
 not the First Discoveries. The men are so far from having Objection to an
 Intercourse of this Kind that they Brought down their Women &
 Recommend them to us with the Greatest Eagerness... I sheltered in a
 small house where I found six of the prettiest girls in the locality. They
 welcomed me with all the gentleness this charming sex can display.
 Each one removed her clothing, an adornment which is bothersome for
 pleasure and, spreading all these charms, showed me in detail the
 gracefulness and contours of the most perfect bodies. They also removed
 my clothing... They hastened to see whether I was made like the locals
 and pleasure quickened this research. Many were... the tender kisses I
 received!..I thought I was transported into the garden of Eden... In the  
 Island of Otaheite where Love is the Chief Occupation, the favorite, nay
 almost the Sole Luxury of the inhabitants; both the bodies and souls of
 the women are modeled into the utmost perfection for that soft
 science...I have nowhere seen such Elegant women as those of
 Otaheite... The Luxury of their appearance is also not a little aided by a
 freedom which their differing from us in their opinion of what Consitutes
 modesty. (A) European thinks nothing of Laying bare her breast to a
 certain point but a hairs breadth Lower no mortal eye must Peirce. An
 Otaheitean on the other hand will by a motion of her dress in a moment
 lay open an arm and half her breast the next maybe the whole...and all
 this with as much innocence and genuine modesty as an English woman
 can shew her arm... Most of these were young women, who put
 themselves into several lascivious postures... At certain parts they put
 their garments aside and exposd with seemingly very little sense of
 shame those parts which most nations have thought it modest to
 conceal, & a woman more advanc’d in years stood in front, held her
 cloaths continually up with one hand and danced with uncommon
 vigour and effrontery, as if to raise in the spectators the most libidinous
 desires....The Over flowing plenty, the Ease in which men live and the
 Softness and Delightfulness of the Clime, the women are Extremely
 Handsome and fond of the European, prodigiously insisting and
 Constantly Importuning them to stay, and their Insinuations are Backed
 by the Courtesy of the Chiefs and the admiration of the people in
 general. It is Infinitely too much for sailors to withstand... Otaheite...
 has every allurement both to luxury and ease, and is the Paradise of the
 World. The Women are handsome, mild in their Manners and
 conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy
 to make them admired and loved. I can only conjecture that (the
 mutineers) have Idealy assured themselves of a more happy life among
 the Otaheitans than they could possible have in England, which joined
 to some Female connections has most likely been the cause of the Whole
 business...The women have too great an intercourse with different Men.
 ... it is considered no infidelity, for I have known a Man to have done the
 Act in the presence of his own Wife, and it is a common thing for the
 Wife to assist the Husband in these Amours... Inclination seems to be
 the only binding law of Marriage in this Country, for a Woman will quit

 her husband if she pleases...’

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