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- business of night, sleep. With the Marquesans it might almost most be
styled the great business of life, for they pass a large portion
of their time in the arms of Somnus. The native strength of their
constitution is no way shown more emphatically than in the quantity of
sleep they can endure. To many of them, indeed, life is little else than
an often interrupted and luxurious nap.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE SPRING OF ARVA WAI--REMARKABLE MONUMENTAL REMAINS--SOME IDEAS WITH
REGARD TO THE HISTORY OF THE PI-PIS FOUND IN THE VALLEY
Almost every country has its medicinal springs famed for their healing
virtues. The Cheltenham of Typee is embosomed in the deepest solitude,
and but seldom receives a visitor. It is situated remote from any
dwelling, a little way up the mountain, near the head of the valley; and
you approach it by a pathway shaded by the most beautiful foliage, and
adorned with a thousand fragrant plants.
The mineral waters of Arva Wai* ooze forth from the crevices of a rock,
and gliding down its mossy side, fall at last, in many clustering
drops, into a natural basin of stone fringed round with grass and
dewy-looking little violet-coloured flowers, as fresh and beautiful as
the perpetual moisture they enjoy can make them.
*I presume this might be translated into ‘Strong Waters’. Arva is the
name bestowed upon a root the properties of which are both inebriating
and medicinal. ‘Wai’ is the Marquesan word for water.
The water is held in high estimation by the islanders, some of whom
consider it an agreeable as well as a medicinal beverage; they bring it
from the mountain in their calabashes, and store it away beneath heaps
of leaves in some shady nook near the house. Old Marheyo had a great
love for the waters of the spring. Every now and then he lugged off to
the mountain a great round demijohn of a calabash, and, panting with his
exertions, brought it back filled with his darling fluid.
The water tasted like a solution of a dozen disagreeable things, and was
sufficiently nauseous to have made the fortune of the proprietor, had
the spa been situated in the midst of any civilized community.
As I am no chemist, I cannot give a scientific analysis of the water.
All I know about the matter is, that one day Marheyo in my presence
poured out the last drop from his huge calabash, and I observed at the
bottom of the vessel a small quantity of gravelly sediment very much
resembling our common sand. Whether this is always found in the water,
and gives it its peculiar flavour and virtues, or whether its presence
was merely incidental, I was not able to ascertain.
One day in returning from this spring by a circuitous path, I came upon
a scene which reminded me of Stonehenge and the architectural labours of
the Druids.
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