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- 7673
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:25.203Z
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- 7615
- text
- saw the warrior holding his paddle with both hands in the act of rowing,
leaning forward and inclining his head, as if eager to hurry on his
voyage. Glaring at him forever, and face to face, was a polished human
skull, which crowned the prow of the canoe. The spectral figurehead,
reversed in its position, glancing backwards, seemed to mock the
impatient attitude of the warrior.
When I first visited this singular place with Kory-Kory, he told me--or
at least I so understood him--that the chief was paddling his way to
the realms of bliss, and bread-fruit--the Polynesian heaven--where
every moment the bread-fruit trees dropped their ripened spheres to the
ground, and where there was no end to the cocoanuts and bananas: there
they reposed through the livelong eternity upon mats much finer than
those of Typee; and every day bathed their glowing limbs in rivers
of cocoanut oil. In that happy land there were plenty of plumes and
feathers, and boars’-tusks and sperm-whale teeth, far preferable to all
the shining trinkets and gay tappa of the white men; and, best of all,
women far lovelier than the daughters of earth were there in abundance.
‘A very pleasant place,’ Kory-Kory said it was; ‘but after all, not much
pleasanter, he thought, than Typee.’ ‘Did he not then,’ I asked him,
‘wish to accompany the warrior?’ ‘Oh no: he was very happy where he was;
but supposed that some time or other he would go in his own canoe.’
Thus far, I think, I clearly comprehended Kory-Kory. But there was a
singular expression he made use of at the time, enforced by as singular
a gesture, the meaning of which I would have given much to penetrate.
I am inclined to believe it must have been a proverb he uttered; for I
afterwards heard him repeat the same words several times, and in what
appeared to me to be a somewhat: similar sense. Indeed, Kory-Kory had
a great variety of short, smart-sounding sentences, with which he
frequently enlivened his discourse; and he introduced them with an air
which plainly intimated, that in his opinion, they settled the matter in
question, whatever it might be.
Could it have been then, that when I asked him whether he desired to go
to this heaven of bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and young ladies, which he had
been describing, he answered by saying something equivalent to our
old adage--‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’?--if he did,
Kory-Kory was a discreet and sensible fellow, and I cannot sufficiently
admire his shrewdness.
Whenever, in the course of my rambles through the valley I happened to
be near the chief’s mausoleum, I always turned aside to visit it. The
place had a peculiar charm for me; I hardly know why, but so it was. As
I leaned over the railing and gazed upon the strange effigy and watched
the play of the feathery head-dress, stirred by the same breeze which in
low tones breathed amidst the lofty palm-trees, I loved to yield myself
up to the fanciful superstition of the islanders, and could almost
believe that the grim warrior was bound heavenward. In this mood when
I turned to depart, I bade him ‘God speed, and a pleasant voyage.’ Aye,
paddle away, brave chieftain, to the land of spirits! To the material
eye thou makest but little progress; but with the eye of faith, I see
thy canoe cleaving the bright waves, which die away on those dimly
looming shores of Paradise.
This strange superstition affords another evidence of the fact, that
however ignorant man may be, he still feels within him his immortal
spirit yearning, after the unknown future.
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