A Footnote to History | Page 7

Here and there, in the back yards of European
establishments, he may have had a glimpse of a native house elbowed
in a corner; but since he left Mulinuu, none on the beach where

islanders prefer to live, scarce one on the line of street. The handful of
whites have everything; the natives walk in a foreign town. A year ago,
on a knoll behind a bar-room, he might have observed a native house
guarded by sentries and flown over by the standard of Samoa. He
would then have been told it was the seat of government, driven (as I
have to relate) over the Mulivai and from beyond the German town into
the Anglo-Saxon. To-day, he will learn it has been carted back again to
its old quarters. And he will think it significant that the king of the
islands should be thus shuttled to and fro in his chief city at the nod of
aliens. And then he will observe a feature more significant still: a house
with some concourse of affairs, policemen and idlers hanging by, a man
at a bank-counter overhauling manifests, perhaps a trial proceeding in
the front verandah, or perhaps the council breaking up in knots after a
stormy sitting. And he will remember that he is in the Eleele Sa, the
"Forbidden Soil," or Neutral Territory of the treaties; that the
magistrate whom he has just seen trying native criminals is no officer
of the native king's; and that this, the only port and place of business in
the kingdom, collects and administers its own revenue for its own
behoof by the hands of white councillors and under the supervision of
white consuls. Let him go further afield. He will find the roads almost
everywhere to cease or to be made impassable by native pig-fences,
bridges to be quite unknown, and houses of the whites to become at
once a rare exception. Set aside the German plantations, and the
frontier is sharp. At the boundary of the Eleele Sa, Europe ends, Samoa
begins. Here, then, is a singular state of affairs: all the money, luxury,
and business of the kingdom centred in one place; that place excepted
from the native government and administered by whites for whites; and
the whites themselves holding it not in common but in hostile camps,
so that it lies between them like a bone between two dogs, each
growling, each clutching his own end.
Should Apia ever choose a coat of arms, I have a motto ready: "Enter
Rumour painted full of tongues." The majority of the natives do
extremely little; the majority of the whites are merchants with some
four mails in the month, shopkeepers with some ten or twenty
customers a day, and gossip is the common resource of all. The town
hums to the day's news, and the bars are crowded with amateur
politicians. Some are office-seekers, and earwig king and consul, and

compass the fall of officials, with an eye to salary. Some are humorists,
delighted with the pleasure of faction for itself. "I never saw so good a
place as this Apia," said one of these; "you can be in a new conspiracy
every day!" Many, on the other hand, are sincerely concerned for the
future of the country. The quarters are so close and the scale is so small,
that perhaps not any one can be trusted always to preserve his temper.
Every one tells everything he knows; that is our country sickness.
Nearly every one has been betrayed at times, and told a trifle more; the
way our sickness takes the predisposed. And the news flies, and the
tongues wag, and fists are shaken. Pot boil and caldron bubble!
Within the memory of man, the white people of Apia lay in the worst
squalor of degradation. They are now unspeakably improved, both men
and women. To-day they must be called a more than fairly respectable
population, and a much more than fairly intelligent. The whole would
probably not fill the ranks of even an English half-battalion, yet there
are a surprising number above the average in sense, knowledge, and
manners. The trouble (for Samoa) is that they are all here after a
livelihood. Some are sharp practitioners, some are famous (justly or not)
for foul play in business. Tales fly. One merchant warns you against his
neighbour; the neighbour on the first occasion is found to return the
compliment: each with a good circumstantial story to the proof. There
is so much copra in the islands, and no more; a man's share of it is his
share of bread; and commerce, like politics, is here narrowed to a focus,
shows its ugly side, and becomes as personal as fisticuffs. Close at their
elbows, in all this contention, stands the native looking on. Like